Amidst sunflowers and landmines, what remains after the occupation of Moscow

Ternovyi Pody (Mykolaiv Oblast), from our correspondent. The land stretching between the regions of Mykolaiv and Kherson tells the story of a successful counter-offensive and a new phase of the war yet to come. Cities are defined by their monuments, such as Kherson, where every bombed-out house is a symbol of resistance. Villages, on the other hand, are defined by their ruins; they speak the language of memories even before time has passed. Along the road leading to the village of Ljubomirivka, there are now cultivated fields – expanses of wheat alternating with rows of sunflowers – but the closer one gets to Ternovyi Pody, the more red and white warning signs appear amongst the fields, each topped by a sign that unequivocally reads: ‘Danger’. The Russians withdrew from these roads in the autumn of 2022, following a battle in which the various villages between the Mykolaïv and Kherson regions changed hands several times within the same week. The fighting was for every centimetre of territory, until the Ukrainian army began to push the Russians towards the River Dnipro. The Russian army had no choice but to retreat to avoid being trapped with its back to the river. With no alternative, it continued to withdraw, village after village, leaving behind vast stretches of minefields. The red signs bearing a skull, which disturb the tranquillity of the tall sunflower stalks, indicate that the mines are still there, almost four years after the counter-offensive – they are the weapon that is never in short supply; they are scattered in abundance, and these fields know this all too well. They had been left to stop the Ukrainian soldiers; they have become a torment for the cows and a curse for the farmers, who had to wait for the demining operations to resume work on the harvest and, at times, out of impatience, had to make do on their own. In Ljubomirivka, which has now returned to some semblance of normal life, there was a sheep farm where, during the occupation and the counter-offensive, the sheep – having run out of food – began to wander out in search of anything left to eat in the abandoned fields. There were no people left to harvest the crops – they had either left or it was too dangerous to set foot in a field – but the cow, unaware of what a landmine was during those months, sought food and met with an explosion. Today, the bumpy country road seems to have returned to normal, but if, at the junction for Ljubomirivka, you turn in the opposite direction, towards an even more overgrown and bumpy track, past what remains of a Second World War monument commemorating a battle between very different armies that took place in these countryside, you arrive at Ternovyi Pody, a street lined with houses – or what remains of them – on both sides. It looks like the fossilised remains of a village, yet it is inhabited not only by the stories of the occupation but by a couple who lived through almost the entire occupation and, as soon as they learnt it was over – despite the destruction, despite the landmines – decided to return. Olena and Volodymyr have restless eyes; they flash with a sadness accepted not with resignation but with wisdom.

Their features hold the memory of their former beauty. They are sun-baked, human forms amidst ruins scorched by war. She talks a lot; when she lets her elderly voice be heard, it sounds as though someone is dubbing her: her face is smooth, at odds with that white hair and her lopsided gait. He is deep in thought, observing; he uses matches to relight the same cigarette time and again. He doesn’t need to smile to show he’s pleased to have unexpected guests – unlike his wife – everything about him fits together: his voice, his gaze, his denim jacket and even the Nike cap pulled low over his head. It feels as though he’s been here forever – for days, for years, perhaps even for centuries. It feels as though Ternovyi Pody is Volodymyr and Olena themselves. They were in the village when the Russians arrived. “It was terrible, both because we were afraid of them and because we didn’t know how to survive,” she says, explaining the nature of her fear: she wasn’t afraid of being killed; she was afraid of being left with nothing to survive on. The Russians were occupying the neighbours’ empty houses, and for fear that their shelters might be hit by the Ukrainian army, they dug pits in the floor and began living underground. They demanded food from those who had remained in Ternovyi Pody, even though they themselves did not know how to feed themselves. For the soldiers from Moscow, it was dangerous to cook livestock; without working stoves, a fire was needed, and a fire was a gift to the enemy – it was tantamount to an invitation: ‘Strike me’. Caught between fear and a lack of everything, even Volodymyr and Olena, the last remaining in the village, decided to leave when their cows were killed.

They walked back from Mykolaïv as soon as they learnt that the short road defining the extent of their village had been cleared. They made their way back through the mined streets and found their house half-burnt down. It is still like that; Volodymyr and Olena wait, they remember, they do not ask for compensation; those blackened walls have become their new normal as they watch a few neighbours return and offer shelter to anyone who asks: dogs, goats, stray journalists.

“They’re still working,” says Olena, referring to the deminers. Over the past few years, teams have arrived from various parts of Europe, with many concentrating in this very area. Work is continuing at both ends of the village, and in June an Iskander missile struck a team of Norwegian deminers who were working alongside their Ukrainian colleagues: two of them were killed. Volodymyr and Olena were present; they heard and saw everything. They remain here; they are the guardians of a village struggling to recover. They welcome visitors with kindness, have anecdotes and stories to share, and pay no heed to hopes. “When we need something, we take our bikes and go to Ljubomirivka,” says Volodymyr. The dogs that have come to greet us bark; they sound like an army, and amidst the yelps it is very difficult to make out the couple’s voices, but the two of them pay no heed. In addition to the dogs, they keep many goats – animals which, according to Volodymyr, are perfect for navigating landmines: they walk without sinking their hooves, they do not tread on anything, and they possess the grace and caution lacking in the cows, which have suffered heavy losses in the fields. These are animals built to survive the retreat from Moscow, which, after three years, has left behind its damage. Life has struggled to reclaim the fields; Volodymyr and Olena have reclaimed their home – they, too, are perfectly suited to survival whilst all around them lies destruction for which there is but one remedy: if people return, it will pass, but people are now mostly in the city, seeking out monuments and shunning the ruins.