‘It’s not just about surviving’: the Ukrainian frontline city where life goes on under cover

A shopper visits a market in a street covered with an anti-drone net in the frontline city of Kherson. ‘We are trying to put nets everywhere where people move and walk,’ says the city’s military governor. ‘We have more than 100km of nets. We want 200km within the next two months.’ Photograph: Nina Liashonok/Reuters

Galyna Lutsenko, a crisis psychologist, is moving busily among a small group of children seated around a table in a basement in Kherson, unique in being Ukraine’s only leading city almost directly on the frontline with Russian forces – and one where people live with the daily threat of attack.

She dangles a plasticine butterfly on a thread over a playhouse on the table. Her own house in the city, she says, was hit by Russian shelling in 2024, injuring her in the leg and stomach.