Homes in ruins and deserted streets: what Russian-occupied Hola Prystan looks like today – video

The temporarily occupied city of Hola Prystan in Kherson Oblast has turned into a ghost town, with homes washed away, fences toppled and streets deserted as a result of the Russian occupation and the destruction of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant.

Source: Hola Prystan City Military Administration on Facebook; Most, a local media outlet

Details: A video posted by the administration shows the aftermath of the disaster and the Russian presence in the city. Previously bustling streets are almost deserted, and most buildings have been damaged or reduced to ruins.

Before Russia's full-scale invasion, 34,400 people lived in the hromada. Now there are only around 6,000 people left, including about 1,600 residents in Hola Prystan itself. Only 45 children still live in the city. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories.]

Russian troops seized the hromada in late February 2022 as they were advancing from temporarily occupied Crimea. Local residents resisted the occupiers and regularly took part in large protests carrying blue-and-yellow flags. Hola Prystan's legally elected mayor, Oleksandr Babych, was seized and abducted by armed Russians on 28 March 2022 because of his openly pro-Ukrainian stance. He remains in Russian captivity.

The city suffered its greatest catastrophe on 6 June 2023, when Russian war criminals blew up sections of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant dam. As the left bank of the Dnipro River is significantly lower than the right bank, the city was almost completely submerged. At the peak of the flooding, water levels reached four metres.

The Russians left civilians to die on their rooftops and prevented Ukrainian volunteers from accessing flooded homes. A large proportion of the houses became uninhabitable as a result.

The actual death toll remains unknown, as the bodies of many local residents remained beneath the rubble of homes that were washed away by the floodwaters.

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