"I see you've never been to southern Ukraine in June," Slava tells me with a smile as I am glued to the window of the car, looking in awe at the stunning blossoms that grew in the fields in the Kherson region that not long ago were the scenes of battle. Less than six months ago, the area changed hands several times between the Ukrainian and Russian armies.
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In the end, the Russian military finally retreated, but not before completely destroying the local infrastructure that is now covered with thousands of blooming poppies, lavender, and knapweeds.
I could not help but think of Israeli poet Natan Yonatan, and his poem "There Are Flowers," in which he wrote, "Have you seen this crimson that screamed to lengths, a bloody field was there before now it's a poppy field." I could not believe how accurately his words described what I saw before me.
Video: Neta Bar in Ukraine
As we travel, our driver Vitya – a fighter of the Ukrainian military's intelligence unit who spends his days off accompanying journalists to the battlefields – points to areas where he had fought and lost friends.
"Do you see that part there? That's where the Russians almost crushed us, but we made them retreat," he says.
"All of Ukraine is here with us"
Despite what one might think, the horrors of the battles that were waged last summer against the hills of the Kherson region were not the reason our team risked traveling to Ukraine, including on roads that have not yet been completely cleared of mines.
The event that led us here was the recent explosion at the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River, during which a significant portion of the structure was destroyed.
The dam was breached and water from its massive reservoir flowed into the river, which then flooded a vast area, including dozens of villages, towns, and the city of Kherson itself.
Slava and his wife volunteered together, distributing drinking water, hygiene products, and cherries from their garden in an armored vehicle.
We continue to drive and the atmosphere quickly turns gloomy as we approach a poppy-filled hill, where just a week ago there was a beautiful flowing river, but where now stands a village completely submerged in water. Slava and I both cannot help but swear in anger.
We arrive at the Yurivka village, which used to be located several dozen meters away from the local Inhulets river, but whose edges are now also flooded with water that rose as a result of the dam explosion.
"We haven't had water in five days," one of the residents said. "There are three wells in the area, but they all have been contaminated, so we don't use them to drink water anymore. It's painfully ironic that we are drowning in the water while there is none to drink."
Slava immediately finds a pump and creates his own water distribution system, helping the locals, so cheerfully that one almost forgets that we are in a disaster zone. The rest of the village looks like the idyllic postcard of Eastern European village life: geese walking around, cherry and mulberry trees overflowing with fruit, and young boys and girls wandering idly together.
But the situation is the exact opposite on the edge of the village, with dozens of volunteers working to rescue people caught in the flood and deliver aid to those whose homes were flooded. The operation is run by Ukrainian soldiers, who are off duty at the moment. They are suspicious of journalists, but when we arrive and they realize that we came to volunteer, they nod in approval.
"This is not at all how I thought I was going to spend my vacation," said one of the soldiers, who was originally supposed to be at home with his wife and children after fighting in Donbas. "These are my people, I can't abandon them."
On the other side of the road, the locals built a makeshift soup kitchen, where they prepare hot meals for the soldiers. Despite the tragedy that befell their village, they are beaming with pride.
"It's good to see our soldiers here. We suffered for ten months under the Russian occupation, the village was cut off and no one took care of us. This disaster is terrible, but at least all of Ukraine is here with us," said Vera.
Although initially suspicious of me, the soldiers later offer me to join them in a rescue operation by boat. I go with Danilo Makrook, a local pensioner, on a small motorboat loaded with bottled water. Our destination is a small cluster of homes on a hill right next to the river, which has become an island where some elderly people, who cannot leave, live.
We set out on the journey, and the sights are far from pleasant: rooftops sticking out of the water, with fuel spills and dead pets floating around.
"We have to be very careful because the Russians paved the entire area with mines that were washed away with the flood," Danilo tells me. We hear bombing in the distance, although Danilo assures me that the Russian military is stationed very far away.
On the way, we notice a goat taking shelter on one of the rooftops. Knowing it's unable to swim to safety, we rescue it and bring it on board the boat.
"We will rebuild"
Back in the village, I meet the mayor, Yurovitch. He is thrilled to discover that his hometown is being visited by a Jew, and an Israeli, no less.
"I pray a lot for Israel," the tells me, and I cannot help but wonder how a man whose village has suffered so much, whose village is going through a crisis, has the headspace to think about and be concerned for the safety of a country thousands of miles away.
When I see Yurovitch's car, I notice the sticker of a Protestant religious organization, which explains his love of Israel.
"There are about 20 houses that have been flooded completely, so they cannot be used and we will probably need to destroy them. The homes here are built of clay bricks, so once they get wet, there is not much we can do.
"The locals don't have much, and those who were affected lost the little that they did have, but we will help them. We will rebuild the houses. We will get donations, like equipment, and the residents will take care of each other.
Meanwhile, Slava has distributed all the water and hygiene products. As it turns out, there is a personal element to the humanitarian journey he is accompanying me on.
You see, across the hill, in the town of Snihurivka, lives Slava's grandmother, 80-year-old Zina. We arrive at her house, which is in a small suburban neighborhood and is surrounded by fruit trees. She meets us with a feast – soups, bagels, and the very popular Ukrainian dish calf's foot jelly, which I have to admit, I had a hard time eating.
Zina is in the kitchen around the clock, preparing food for the soldiers and the volunteers.
"A real Jew," she says when she looks at me. "I haven't seen one like this here in many, many years."
Thankfully, Zina's home, which is also built of clay bricks, is further away from the river, so it was not affected by the flood.
"I've lived by the Inhulets my entire life, and seeing it flow in the opposite direction [as a result of the dam explosion] was a very upsetting experience," she says.
"Imagine seeing the sun rise in Tel Aviv and set in Jerusalem," she says, surprising me with her knowledge of Israeli geography as she fills my plate with another portion of calf's foot jelly, eating which was one of several challenges I had to overcome as a field reporter.
"It was a terrible shock as if the occupation and the battles around the town wasn't enough," Zina says.
Odjick can help with it all
The first night in northern Kherson was completely dark – pitch black almost as if there is very little electricity in the town. In one of the towns, we meet Odjick, who volunteers to rescue civilians from war zones. I first met Odjick last spring, when he helped me get out of a particularly sticky situation during the third battle for the city of Mykolaiv. He doesn't like to speak about himself so much, but I know that he possesses the skills of a true fighter.
Whether it's arranging interviews with reluctant fighters and senior military officials, accessing military areas closed off to journalists, or getting a tray of pizza in the heart of a battle zone – Odjick can help with it all, and make it look easy.
"I've found a place for us to sleep," he tells me. "Oh, and I brought a photographer with me," he adds nonchalantly, while I myself am surprised to see a well-dressed young woman trailing behind him with a huge backpack and a determined expression. Life is full of surprises, and the biggest war in Europe in the current century is even more so.
We wake up at dawn, after spending the night in an attic, and were even able to take a hot shower, a luxury at this time. Odjick came from the Donbas region, where he spent over a week in the trenches together with the front-line fighters in preparation for the Ukrainian counterattack.
"I've kind of forgotten what it feels like," he tells me after stepping out of the shower.
Odjick's skills were especially necessary that morning, as our destination, the flooded city of Kherson, had the previous day experienced a merciless Russian shelling aimed, sadistically, at evacuation and rescue teams.
Due to the shelling, the military further tightened the requirements for entering the city for journalists and rescue teams and declared the flooded areas off-limit. "These are the passwords for this morning's crossing," Odjick tells me, showing me a piece of paper. "We'll need them to pass through many checkpoints at the entrance to the city."
Vitya, our driver, loads the car with everything we need, and we set off towards Kherson, an hour-and-a-half-long drive on bumpy roads.
At the entrance to the city, we meet another team of volunteers who will accompany us, a cheerful group of youngsters who arrive in an old and obviously unprotected bus with an expression of self-confidence and an atmosphere of an annual trip. The bus is packed to bursting with supplies of essentials, water, blankets, clothes, and, surprisingly, many cans of canned food for animals.
"I thought my husband had drowned"
The volunteers are members of the Sandwox organization that carry out all kinds of humanitarian work across Ukraine. The group was established by young Odessans who met at the beginning of the invasion when they fortified the city with sandbags as it was in real danger of falling to the Russians.
When the danger was over – with the Russian military having reached close to Odessa, but later retreated – the same group of young people looked for new ways to contribute. Naturally, aid to disaster-stricken Kherson became a number one priority, and the volunteers showed up in full force.
"We cannot abandon this city. These are our people here and their suffering is unimaginable," says one of the volunteers, as she carries a box of blankets into a hospital that has been converted into a temporary housing center for disaster evacuees.
What I see inside quenches my heart: Dozens of elderly people were brought there after being evacuated from their homes by the rescue teams. The numbers are almost unimaginable: over 4,000 people were rescued from the rising river waters in less than five days.
Volodya, a kind elderly man, sits on his bed and stares blankly into space. Unlike the rest, he is actually in good health and only had to be rescued because he missed the warning about the dam explosion and his house began to fill with water.
His wife, Ludmyla, was out of town, and upon return, discovered her home underwater and her husband nowhere to be seen.
"I thought he had drowned," she says quietly, but still traumatized.
Volodya managed to escape at the very last moment. "I managed to swim to the nearby street, and there the rescuers picked me up in a boat," he says proudly.
The couple enjoys talking to the volunteers and asks that they stay to chat with them before continuing to the next destination. "We lost everything, we have nowhere to go and no one to take care of us here," Ludmyla says.
In the same room, I meet Igor, a boy barely seven years old, whose mother had died three months earlier in a Russian shelling, and whose home where he lives with his father is now underwater. While Igor's father is looking for a place for them to live, there is no one to stay with the boy. After everything he's been through, Igor is alone.
Local policeman Borya Bachov, who has been helping to rescue stranded Ukrainians, said, "What this city has gone through since it was liberated from the Russian occupation is a brutal shelling campaign aimed at the neighborhoods adjacent to the river.
"Entire areas were abandoned long before the explosion of the dam, and when the Russians realized that they could not control the city, they chose to try to kill it. The dam exploded at 2 a.m. in the morning, and by 7 a.m., a large part of the city was already underwater. People had to leave behind all their possessions. I arrived With my team on motorboats and we started pulling people from roofs. It was so surreal. In my life, I never imagined that such a disaster was possible. But the people here are strong, everyone is disciplined and listens to instructions, and there is a tremendous determination to get through this too."
Chabadnik with a helmet and vest
As we travel through the city the severity of the situation becomes more and more clear. There is no electricity, no running water, and 90% of the shops are closed.
"Everyone who could – left," Anna, a young volunteer who arrived with the members of the "Sandbox" group, tells us. Unlike the others, Anna is actually a resident of Kherson and her family lives on the other side of the river, in the territory still occupied by Russia.
"Only the weakest and most vulnerable have remained, the city has been dying for months under the shelling, and the dam explosion is only a fraction of the tragedy."
Finally, we reach our destination: the Kherson synagogue, a beautiful building that stands on a quiet street in the city center. The doors of the building open wide, and two men wearing kippahs come outside carrying heavy packages.
Right behind them is Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolff, the Chabad rabbi of Kherson, wearing a helmet and vest, quite the unusual look.
"My mother made me promise that I would not go outside without protective gear," he said. "What can I do."
We get in the car and visit several residents in the city. Woff has worked with the local community for 30 years, and some of the stories he tells me leave me stunned. For instance, under the Russian occupation, he was almost shot when he delivered medicine to community members.
"It was dangerous, but I had no choice. The city began to run out of medicine and members of the community were left without blood pressure medicine, without insulin, it was a matter of life and death," he said. "It was completely dark and I got lost on the way, so I stopped too close to the Russian army checkpoint. It was a miracle that they only fired a few warning shots."
Wolff's family stayed in the city during the occupation, and later, when the shelling continued, he sent his loved ones to Odesa, while he remained in Kherson.
The rabbi takes care of more than just the Jewish community, the entire city has become his extended congregation.
"I love this city so much, it was a wonderful city," he says.
Together with Wollf, we visit an elderly community member on the other side of the city.
"She has been in and out of hospitals recently, her health is not particularly good, so I come to her home," he says.
There are no words to describe how happy Chana was to see Wolff, carrying a six-pack of bottled water and smiling from ear to ear.
"This man is like my son, we have known each other for years, I used to teach his children," she says.
Looking ahead with hope
As Wolff and I part ways, I hear the terrible news. A rescue team working on the other side of the river, controlled by the Russian military, came under fire and several members were killed.
The gloomy feeling that overtakes the city is reflected in the heavy rain and darkness that begins to set in. We get to the Antonivskyi Bridge, which used to connect the city to the southern bank of the river but is now destroyed.
The monstrous sight of the mighty Dnipro River turning into a murky lake and flooding residential neighborhoods, businesses, and gardens, evokes a sense of sorrow and rage at the hands that caused this.
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"You have to write about this because it's not a natural disaster. Russia did this on purpose, they want to destroy the city and all of Ukraine," Vitya says as we get ready to leave Kherson.
Suddenly Fiora the photographer notices something. On a residential building, near the exit from the city, there is a mural that leaves us stunned. It was clearly painted shortly after the liberation of the city, and depicts Kherson as a woman, with the symbols of the city – watermelons and sunflowers – as she sails on a boat in a sea of raging water, her face turned toward the sun through the clouds, looking forward with hope.
The prophecy of the mural strikes hard. I can't help but think about all the people I met in the last few days, people who lost everything and their lives were ruined as a result of war, of man's evil.
As the car jolts along the bumpy roads of Kherson Oblast, I can't help but wonder when the sun will break through the clouds for Kherson and its residents, and for all of Ukraine.
