Only a fortnight after celebrating the arrival of Ukrainian soldiers liberating them from eight months of Russian occupation, farm workers Larysa and Oleksandr Simutenko made a terrifying escape from their home outside Kherson.
The couple in their sixties were forced to run through Russian shelling to escape pounding attacks on the village of Kozatske.
The Russian military retreat from Kherson and surrounding villages in southern Ukraine last month was one of the most significant defeats of the war so far — their third major withdrawal after Kyiv in March and the Kharkiv region in September.
