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AIPROPX ReportNewsweek · 1h ago
Bombs, Bodies and Barbecues: Independence Day on Ukraine's Frontline
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. "Unfortunately, we will celebrate this day under drones , under artillery explosions and missiles. But we will definitely celebrate. We’ll grill kebabs."
Few statements could better sum up the perverse sense of joy amid terror experienced by millions of Ukrainians today, their Day of Independence.
These are the words of Viktor Hordiienko, a farmer in the Beryslav district of Ukraine ’s embattled Kherson region. His farm, like those of his friends, has been attacked relentlessly by Russian drones. One of them killed his father, Oleksandr, last year.
Yet this is all the more reason to mark Ukraine’s independence with a proper celebration, Hordiienko told Newsweek .
"I believe this holiday is much more valuable than it was five years ago, for me and every Ukrainian," he said. "Before the war, we did not really understand what independence was. Now, we understand: freedom of speech, freedom of action, and free land. Words of independence are not empty to me."
On August 24, 1991, modern Ukraine secured its freedom from the Soviet Union with the "Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine." Now, its people are locked in another existential struggle against the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin .
Nowhere is the struggle more apparent than in Kherson, a region divided by the Dnipro River. Russian forces now occupy almost everything south and east of the Dnipro, known as the "left bank."
Those living in the remaining 30 percent of territory north of the river—on the "right bank"—are technically free, but the challenges they face daily are unimaginable.
Svitlana, a 52-year-old resident of Kherson city on the edge of the Dnipro, told Newsweek that everyday errands have become a mortal game of chance, with Russian drone squads perched on the opposite side of the river, just a few hundred yards away.
"Every ordinary thing, going for a walk or a trip to get groceries, is a risk," she said. "At any moment you can become a target for a drone. It doesn’t care who you are or what business you are on; every movement is dangerous."
The human mind is nothing if not adaptable, though, and the ubiquity of the Russian threat has forced many Khersonians to undergo a profound psychological transformation.
"The strangest thing is that you gradually begin to treat the abnormal as normal. You learn to work, sleep, plan meetings and even joke within this reality," said Oleksandra Knyha, a costume designer at Kherson’s Mykola Kulish Theater. "The feeling of fear becomes dull."
But live in Kherson long enough, and you’ll be served a reminder sharp enough to puncture the illusion of normality.
Zarina Zabrisky, a Ukrainian-American journalist and filmmaker, endured such a reminder the morning she spoke with Newsweek .
"F***, I’m sorry…I’m having a horrible day. People die a lot, but my close friends don’t die every day.
"You know, we have this yoga circle with people who lived through occupation. We go there regularly; it’s like an informal support group, just a circle of friends helping each other. One woman there was killed this morning."
Even by Khersonian standards, Zabrisky has seen more horror than most. Last year, she directed and produced the documentary film Kherson: Human Safari , which sought to expose the practice of Russian drone operators systematically targeting civilians.
She believes the scale of the atrocity in Kherson surpasses that of Bucha, where Russian soldiers slaughtered civilians in the weeks following their failed assault on Kyiv . At least in Bucha, Zabrisky said, the dead could be buried once the invaders left.
"We have civilians killed almost every day…There's a burial crisis going on; there are bodies on the side of the road because the Russian drones don’t let Ukrainians approach the bodies. There are dogs eating the bodies."
According to the Human Safari Casualties tracker, launched by the Kherson regional government to document the heinous practice, the strike rate is worsening. In the first six months of 2026, the number of victims surpassed the total for all of 2024 and reached almost 70 percent of the total recorded in 2025.
Zarina tries to maintain contact with a few acquaintances in the Russian-controlled left bank, but says the occupiers have almost completely blocked communications and mined all roads in and out of the main settlements.
One person living in the occupied town of Oleshky across the river from Kherson city managed to get a brief message to her last week. It did not make for positive reading.
"There is no food delivery. No meat, no dairy, no eggs, no fish. No humanitarian aid. People eat what grows in the garden. There is no food for domestic animals, dogs and cats.
"Children are malnourished, people are starving."
Not every Ukrainian is forced to calculate the risk of a drone strike each time they leave home. But even for those living abroad, there is simply no such thing as out of sight, out of mind.
"Independence Day is very personal for me," Myroslava Gongadze, a policy consultant for the Congressional Ukraine Caucus and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Newsweek. "I remember once I was giving an interview after Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity in 2014, when Russia invaded for the first time, and the correspondent asked me: ‘Will Ukraine survive?’
"At the time I couldn’t believe he was asking me this question. Back then, I didn’t understand the full extent of Russia’s malign intentions. Now, I realize just how important it was."
Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 was, according to Gongadze, "the culmination of Russia’s imperial ambition to control Ukraine" after the Kremlin was unable to subjugate Ukraine via other means.
"First, they tried by controlling the government through extortion and corruption. They tried to install their own puppet r...
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