Ukraine war: Hope and hardship inside the maternity ward in newly liberated Kherson

Published

3 years ago

November 15, 2022

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Head doctor, Irina Starodumova, guides me through the gloom with torch in hand, in Kherson’s central hospital.

As we walk, she tells me that they look after people with the sound of shelling in the background, a constant reminder that war is never far away.

Every aspect of her work, and her team’s work, has been impacted by the war and the liberation of her city will not make things better overnight.

“We have to refuse help to some patients, unfortunately. We have the same needs as before the war, but we can’t get any medicines now,” she says.

They are short of everything here but perhaps most of all power.

There’s only one generator for the entire hospital and sometimes they can’t get enough diesel to keep it running.

When they retreated, the Russians destroyed infrastructure in the city that provides basic services and it’s those with the greatest need that are suffering most.

As we are taken to the maternity ward, we can hear artillery thumping over our heads – the staff never get used to this trauma they cannot escape.

Inside the difficulties are acute.

Alyona has just gone into labour and keeping her warm is the priority for the medics – they’ve set up an electric bar heater; it’s improvised but it works.

The maternity doctor, Oleksandr Lysenko, explains that providing basic things has become almost impossible.

“We can’t provide heating for everyone after they’ve given birth. We can do it during surgery, and we are able to provide heating during some procedures. But we can’t warm up all mums and newborns after the birth.”

In the room next door is Yulia.

Her son Constantin came into the world on the day this city was liberated, the nurse helps them keep warm using plastic bottles of hot water.

“I wished that my child would be born in Ukraine. It was difficult but I kept my spirits up and I believed my son would be born in a Ukrainian Kherson,” she says, smiling as she talks.

The babies in the unit were all conceived just before the start of this war and for nearly all of their pregnancies the mothers were living under Russian occupation.

For Marina, her happy day is tinged with sadness.

“I could say he is a child of war from the beginning to the end; when Kherson was occupied until it was liberated. I don’t even know whether his father knows he has a son.”

This war has been grinding on now for nine long months but the mothers here hope their children will grow up knowing only freedom.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

4 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

10 hours ago

August 10, 2025