‘Death everywhere’ in once-jubilant Kherson

Tamara Smoliarchuk mourns at the grave of her niece, Olena Kyrpychenko, a teacher who was killed Friday by Russian shelling, in the main cemetery in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, May 9, 2023. (Finbarr O’Reilly/The New York Times)

THE road to Kherson is long, straight and empty. Vacant fields rise from either side.

Entering town from the west, you pass the ATB supermarket, one of the mainstays of the city’s shopping.