Eugenia Belonogova, a yoga instructor, has lived in the Ukrainian city of Kherson her entire life. She survived the Russian occupation during the first months of the full-scale invasion in 2022 – and celebrated alongside thousands of others when Ukrainian forces liberated the city that November. She hoped normal life would soon return.
Instead, the liberation marked the beginning of a new phase of Russia’s campaign of terror against Kherson’s residents. Russian troops remained on the south bank of the Dnipro river barely a kilometre away, launching relentless daily strikes by artillery, guided aerial bombs and small quadcopter drones, in use since the summer of 2024.
