EXPLOSIONS have become part of daily life for the residents of Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine. For 161 days of this 186-day conflict, shells have fallen on the city.
Once a centre of shipbuilding for the Russian empire, Mykolaiv which had a pre-war population of nearly 500,000, was among the first places attacked after Russian president Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine on February 24.
Since then this strategically important city has been targeted almost daily.
Mykolaiv and its defenders are the only things that prevent Russian troops from advancing on the grand strategic and economic prize that is the port city of Odesa.
We encounter Sveta as we travel the streets of this shattered city which lies just 12 miles from the frontlines.
Sveta, who worked at the Mykolaiv Hotel, recalls the day earlier this month when the building was shattered by a Russian cruise missile.
“Look here at this mess,” she says when we come across her standing outside the rear of the gutted multi-storey building. Brush in hand, she is sweeping the street in what could only be described as a habit of work, given the massive piles of crushed concrete, twisted metal and slithers of glass piled up outside the hotel’s back entrance sitting behind her.
“I don’t pay much attention to the sirens,” she tells us, before explaining that she lives nearby and still comes to the hotel even though it will be a long time if ever before it is functioning again.
Since shelling took out the Mykolaiv-Dnipro pipeline in April, clean water has been difficult to find.
Even now, every day people here can be seen making the journey to pipe stands for fresh drinking water. At one stand in the city, I watched as residents queued to fill up.
“It’s been like this for months, we’re so tired of it, and who knows if it will be fixed before the winter,” one woman told me.
Despite the destruction, the city’s residents remain resolute despite the constant danger.
“It’s mainly the kind of warfare where we come, shoot and leave before their artillery barrage comes in,” Valentyn, a volunteer soldier tells me. He is headed back to the frontline in the coming days.
Ukraine’s resistance continues.
