Nearly a year after the November 11 anniversary of its liberation, the Ukrainian city of Kherson is enduring nearly daily attacks from Russian forces. With no end in sight, parents are facing the daunting choice: endure the attacks as a family or get their children to safety.
Stay Or Flee: Parents Face Dilemma In Ukraine's Kherson A Year After Liberation
A protective fence against shelling encircles a children's playground in the southern city of Kherson, where toys sit unused.
Kherson is situated on the Ukrainian-controlled western bank of the Dnieper River, which serves as the de facto front line. As hostilities intensify on both sides, parents are confronted with an agonizing decision: whether to brave the relentless Russian shelling as a family or get their children to safety.
Stray dogs gather on a deserted street in the city of Kherson.
The city was liberated from Russian forces on November 11, 2022, after nearly eight months of occupation. Almost a year later, it faces daily attacks. Fearing for the city's children, local officials established a program to temporarily relocate them to a holiday camp in the mountains in western Ukraine.
Children gather before their evacuation on October 30.
Nadia Kondratkova, a mother of two daughters who will be separated from them for the first time, trembled with fear as her eyes filled with tears.
"They have to get some rest far away from the explosions and sirens," Kondratkova said, explaining her decision to send them away. "They're exhausted," she said. "They can't sleep anymore and they scream at night."
With the sounds of explosions in the distance, children wait on the evacuation bus before their departure.
"Our task is to get the children to a place of safety for a few months," Kherson official Anton Yefanov said. "We've been feeling it's getting more dangerous because there is more and more shelling."
Borys, 11, sits alone in the small room that he shares with his family at a refugee reception center in the southern city of Mykolayiv.
Kyiv says that over 500 children have been killed since Russia launched its unprovoked invasion in February 2022, a grim milestone in the more than 20-month-long conflict.
A family's religious icons adorn the room where they live at the refugee reception center.
While some families are fleeing Kherson, others have chosen to stay.
A girl flies a kite with her grandmother in the late-afternoon sunlight in Kherson.
Volodymyr applies Halloween makeup on the face of his 11-year-old daughter, Daria.
"It's difficult to be a parent at the moment. It's difficult to explain to a child what's happening without traumatizing them. We tell them to be more careful, to listen for the sirens."
He and his wife try to take their children to playgrounds "before the sirens," he said, "so that they don't forget there is warmth, cheeriness, happiness, and not just tragedy and death."
Maryna helps her daughter Anna, 6, dress for Halloween as her husband, Volodomyr, watches their daughter Daria run around wearing a black cape as she chants, "I am death, I hide in the shadows."
"We celebrate Halloween to forget the war," Volodymyr said, smiling in a patch of sunlight.
Gennadiy Grytskov, 43, sits next to his mother, Lyubov Sytnykova, in the refugee center as she shows a photo on a phone of her 6-year-old grandson, Nazar, who was killed last month during Russian shelling in the Kherson region. Her 13-year-old grandson was also injured. They now live at the site of a former boarding school in Mykolayiv.
"We were supposed to celebrate my son's birthday that day. My grandson had told me he wanted to go to school, that he wanted to learn to write. He never got to go," she said, in tears.