Mud and thirst: Two Ukraine cities cope with dam’s destruction
Her hands crusty with dried mud, Ukrainian Vira Rozhko pauses from the Sisyphean effort of cleaning her flooded home to leaf through a family photo album.
Water has destroyed many of the images, though some still show scenes of joyful, long-gone memories.
“At least I saved something,” says Ms. Rozhko, her voice drained of emotion, as she stands in the ruins of the house her parents built in a low-lying district of Kherson.
Inside, the air is still infused with the fetid stink of damp and rot after a cleaning team from the local Ukrainian charity Lighthouse of Revival shoveled most of the mud from the floors and hacked away the waterlogged lower half of each wall.
What remains are a few mud-smeared personal possessions and plenty of anti-Russia anger that is shared in the region, which flooded when Russian forces are believed to have blown
