Vinnytsia, Ukraine — The invading Russian forces have left Kherson, but they are still raining terror on the residents of the southern Ukrainian city.
“I hate Russians,” Lilia said after finding her mother’s body. Natasha was killed steps from the safety of her home by a Russian missile strike. Lilia’s father also died a few hours later, but she is not alone.
“They took the most precious people in my life, but I have a son,” she said. “For him, I have to live.”
Survivors of Russia’s relentless salvo of rocket fire are left in cold and dark as many of Vladimir Putin’s missiles have been targeted Ukraineelectrical network.
The Russian army uses winter as a weapon. With the power cut, millions of families were unable to cook on Saturday as Ukraine commemorated the Great Famine of the 1930s, when the Soviet Union intentionally starved millions of Ukrainians.
“We cannot be broken,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an address to his nation, honoring those killed by Joseph Stalin then – and Vladimir Putin now. “Before they wanted to destroy us with hunger, now with darkness and cold.”
Even in the capital Kyiv, the electricity supply is unreliable. Residents took shelter wherever they could, including in tents. Inside one of them we found Constantin, a video game designer.
“We have to live, we have to stay, we have to fight,” he told CBS News. “It’s the only way to win this war…Even if we have to sleep in a tent.”
Even in dire circumstances, Ukrainians have reason to be hopeful – more signs that Russian forces are being beaten.
Britain’s latest war intelligence assessment says Putin’s army is so short of weapons and other supplies that it appears to be resorting to firing 1980s cruise missiles that have been stripped of their warheads nuclear.
While such missiles ‘will still produce damage’ just with their impact on the unused fuel they still crush, the UK said they were ‘unlikely to achieve reliable effects against intended targets’ .
“Whatever Russia’s intention, this improvisation highlights the level of depletion of Russia’s long-range missile stockpile,” according to the British assessment.