People walk past the destroyed location of a cafe in Kherson, Ukraine.
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Svet Jacqueline for NPR
KHERSON, Ukraine — In this city where Russian drones usually fill the skies, Olena Soboleva could not easily walk down the street to meet her best friend, Anna Herasimenko.
Then came last week’s truce, negotiated by First Lady Melania Trump and Pope Leo XIV, in a corner of southern Ukraine that included Kherson.
This weekend, the two friends, both 21, took the opportunity to venture outside to autumnal skies clear of drones and guided bombs.
Best friends Anna Herasimenko and Olena Soboleva, both 21, spent the ceasefire taking walks in the city and having coffee at a favorite cafe. They rarely see each other in person because constant drone attacks make it too dangerous to venture outside.
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Svet Jacqueline for NPR
“No drones, no explosions,” Soboleva says. “No one wants to kill you.”
They passed families strolling with their kids, shoppers stocking up on supplies and couples holding hands. They lined up at a cafe filled with paintings of cats.
“The city seems alive,” says Herasimenko, “just like it used to be.”
Over the weekend, she had also ventured to a salon.
“I did my nails,” she says, showing off fresh burgundy polish. “The streets are full of people, just as they were in the past.”
The truce ended Sunday night. Russia and Ukraine agreed to it in order to help Oleshky, a town across the Dnipro River from Kherson. Russian troops occupied Oleshky in 2022 and mined the land around it. Food and medicine rarely got through. NPR spoke to the families of residents there, who said their loved ones survived on pickles and boiled weeds.
Over the weekend, hundreds of Oleshky residents were evacuated, eventually escorted into northern Ukraine on buses. Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman — the country’s independent watchdog for human rights — thanked Melania Trump for ensuring that the ceasefire, which lasted from Oct. 27 to Nov. 1, happened.
Residents of Kherson walk into a bus at a busy public transit stop on Nov. 1, the last day of the local ceasefire.
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A woman walks past a public bus in Kherson during the ceasefire.
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Kherson residents wait for public buses under drone nets during the last days of a local ceasefire in southern Ukraine.
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Svet Jacqueline for NPR
“I believe they can be upheld and honored,” Lubinets said about truces between Ukraine and Russia.
Even a short pause in hostilities was a respite for Kherson. Russian troops occupied the city for several months in 2022, until local partisans spied for Ukrainian soldiers, who then forced the Russians out of the city.
Anti-drone nets protect the road leading into Kherson, Ukraine.
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Workers repair tunnels of heavyweight mesh mesh nets that protect a highway leading into the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson from Russian FPV (first-person-view) drone attacks.
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Svet Jacqueline for NPR
Locals walk through Independence Square in the center of Kherson, Ukraine, where a short local ceasefire offered respite from constant drone attacks.
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Svet Jacqueline for NPR
Since 2024, Russian troops based across the river have hunted Kherson residents with FPV (first-person-view) drones strapped with explosives. The highway into Kherson is shrouded in tunnels of heavy mesh nets to protect locals from these drones. These anti-drone nets also cover Kherson’s streets and many of its buildings.
This weekend, cars pulled up next to the Greek-style monument marking the city’s gateway.
Svitlana Vorobiova, a retired police officer, drove here from a safer city where she now lives. She took photos with her children at the monument.
A boy poses for a photo at the entrance to the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson. Families who fled Kherson because of Russia’s constant bomb and drone attacks on the city returned during the days of a short ceasefire that ended Nov. 1.
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Svitlana Vorobiova, a retired police officer from Kherson, Ukraine, is emotional as she returns home during a ceasefire that ended Nov. 1.
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“I have a place in Kherson, and my parents are also here,” she says, and her voice breaks. Tears fill her eyes.
“I brought my son with me,” Vorobiova says. “He hasn’t been here in four years. He said, ‘I cannot believe I’m in my hometown!'”
Inside the city, Volodymyr Mykolaienko, a former mayor of Kherson, strolls past the crushed remains of a once-grand administrative building. Locals stop him and shake his hand. He says he’s happy to see so many people outside.
“I walk around the city a lot these days,” he says. “I cannot sit still at home.”
A shopper passes the central market in Kherson during a short ceasefire. Locals stocked up on groceries as the truce kept skies clear of Russian FPV (first-person-view) drones that often target civilians in the city.
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Women at a market in Kherson during a local ceasefire that ended Nov. 1.
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Volodymyr Mykolaienko, a former mayor of Kherson, stands in Independence Square in the city. He spent most of Russia’s full-scale assault on Ukraine as a prisoner of war in Russia. He was arrested while Kherson was under Russian occupation in 2022. Ukrainian troops liberated the city in November 2022, and Mykolaienko was released in a prisoner exchange last year.
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Mykolaienko, 66, spent years as a prisoner of war in Russia, confined to tiny rooms, starved and tortured. Russian troops arrested him in Kherson in early 2022, when the city was under Russian occupation. Mykolaienko was freed last year in a prisoner exchange and returned to Kherson, where his family still lives.
This truce allowed him to visit his father’s grave. The cemetery is in a part of the city that’s usually filled with drones.
“I could not hold myself back,” he says. “I was able to do exactly what I have long wanted to do — to talk to my father, pray, thank him for my life and to tell him what was happening to our city.”
Olena Yehorova, an oncology nurse, on the bus during the last days of the ceasefire in Kherson, Ukraine.
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At a busy bus stop, oncology nurse Olena Yehorova smiles at a gray-haired man playing folk music on his accordion.
“This truce has been such a relief,” she says. “The people in our city have been able to breathe. Of course, we still walk around with caution, because you cannot trust the Russians.”
She couldn’t help looking up at the sky. A few hours later, the truce was over. She said she expects new attacks to resume at any time.
NPR’s Polina Lytvynova contributed to this report from Kyiv.
This story originally appeared on NPR
