Hundreds of abandoned bicycles in a small town near Ukraine’s southern front line tell many stories of their owners, who were forced to flee the Russian invasion.
They come in all colors: green, red, black, blue, all stored inside and outside a small warehouse in the town of Zelenodulsk.
“We keep them for their owners, so they can come and collect them at the end of the war,” says municipal worker Vitaly Rekhlitsky.
One bicycle has a woven saddle cover, another has a small pouch attached to the frame, many others are rusted and damaged by time and travel.
Some have child seats attached to the back.
Among the more than 600 bicycles stocked are pushchairs, wheelchairs, special needs tricycles and brown children’s bicycles.
Many of them have been stockpiled since early March, when Russia’s military slowly took control of the recently annexed neighboring Kherson region.
By this time, Russian forces had stolen most of the cars from the surrounding villages and all that was left were bicycles, Rekhlitsky recalled.
“People ran away, sometimes with nothing, sometimes with a bag,” he told.
Some pedaled to freedom on decades-old bikes that looked like they could be from the Soviet era.
‘A Huge Loss’
The exiles had limited resources.
Dmytro Kostenko, who protects these abandoned vehicles, said that for the elderly, losing a bike is a “huge loss”.
As Ukrainian forces advanced in their recent counteroffensive, recapturing nearby villages, more bicycles were brought back by soldiers.
But in a sign that things may be getting better, around 50 owners have returned to collect their property.
Every time they come, “I have tears in my eyes,” Kostenko told JEE News, with the sounds of artillery screeching in the distance.
The bombardment has intensified since the retaliation began, the man in his sixties said, clutching his crutches.
Located just 15 kilometers from the southern front line, Zelenudolsk is a small town of about 13,000 residents, founded in the 1960s when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.
Its name translates from Ukrainian and Russian as “green valley”, a reference to the rich agricultural lands on which the town was built.
The tall chimneys of the Zelenodolsk Thermal Power Plant are visible from parts of the city, as well as dozens of similar low-rise buildings built to house its workers.
There was an influx of patients at a nearby hospital on Thursday morning after Russian forces targeted the plant.
According to regional governor Valentin Reznichenko, about 19 people were injured.
“People were just going to work when the Russians fired Uragan (missiles) at them,” he said.
‘Antichrist’
Dr. Svetlana Kravchuk, who treated them at the hospital, said that the victims were hit by bullets, but no one was seriously injured.
The doctor added that many people in the city suffer from “chronic stress” from the repeated bombings, which killed a nine-year-old boy in September.
During nights spent hiding in corridors or underground cellars, many have “forgotten to sleep in bed”, he said.
Hospital director Olena Yaroshenko said she felt more “satisfied” since the start of the retaliation since “we hear our people being shot”.
But in a garden on the outskirts of Zelenodolsk, where a pear tree hangs under the weight of its fruit and a few strawberries still grow, Yevgenia Vasilieva mourns a lost peace.
The 84-year-old arrived in Zelenodolsk in 1964, a few years after its founding, and saw the city grow.
She was married to a Russian and often visited Russia, where “all kinds of nice people live,” she said.
The deeply religious woman with a colorful scarf covering her gray hair, however, does not mince words in describing Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him the “Antichrist” and the herald of the “Apocalypse”.
Near his garden, a pre-Soviet image of “Green Valley,” a small house recently lost its roof, swept away by shelling.
