Residents of freed Kherson look anxiously to the future

As locals celebrate liberation by Ukrainian troops, the threat from Russian soldiers left behind looms, Bel Trew reports

- Bel Trew

A single bag of food was all it took for the Ukrainian grandmother to stop in her tracks and crumple into tears. Against the haunting boom of shelling, Ludmilla, 76, sobbed as she explained how she had lived through hell for the past eight months.

In May her son was killed in the bombardment of her hometown, Kherson, the last regional capital that Russia occupied until it was forced into an embarrassing retreat this week. Ludmilla managed to evacuate her daughter-in-law and the grandchildren to Poland, but she stayed in Kherson to look after the family home.

Without electricity, water or gas, and with dwindling food supplies, she limped on in the dark all alone. That was until Ukraine's soldiers opened the city on Friday to ecstatic crowds. "God bless you; I haven't had a decent meal in months," she told the staff of global food charity World Central Kitchen, who yesterday were handing out hundreds of emergency food packets to crowds in the centre of the recently liberated city.

Each packet, containing tinned meat, fish, vegetables and basic foodstuffs, is a lifeline. People described food prices tripling under occupation and supplies running out. "It's been months of hell," Ludmilla continued, clutching her parcel of food like a lifebuoy. At night the bombing was so loud. And still there is shelling."

Across Kherson city, residents-wielding flowers Ukrainian flags and have emerged from their homes to welcome Kyiv's -triumphant soldiers, who first entered the suburbs of the city on Friday.