In the first hours of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, shock prevailed in the Kherson City Council, and the leadership had no clear decisions regarding the city’s defense.
This was recounted in an interview with MOST by the former deputy mayor of Kherson and current serviceman Roman Holovnia.
According to him, he arrived at the city council as early as six in the morning on February 24, when the city was already suffering the first strikes, but Mayor Ihor Kolykhaiev was not at his workplace. He appeared much later.
“At six o’clock I was already at the city council. Everyone was already in a state of shock. The first strikes. Chornobaivka, everyone understood that the war had begun. Kolykhaiev appeared somewhere around nine–ten o’clock. That really angered me, well, because it was war”, – he said.
He also recalled the mayor’s first communication with the deputies after the invasion began and the pessimistic mood in the session hall.
“At first Kolykhaiev did not want to go to the deputies. Luhova (former city council secretary Halyna Luhova, – MOST) pulled him out, she later told me that herself. I stood there, listened and there was this line: “look, the Russians are coming there, so they’ll come in now – they’ll take Kherson, next Mykolaiv, then Odesa”. I thought, what kind of approach is that. Are we going to defend our city, our Motherland?”, – recalls Holovnia.