Out of 12,000 People, Only 2,000 Remained in the Town: Who is Destroying Beryslav in Kherson Region

Since the beginning of the de-occupation, Beryslav, a small town in the Kherson region, has been suffering from enemy shelling on a daily basis. The Russians are levelling it to the ground, hitting civilian objects and homes with artillery, multiple rocket launchers, tanks and aerial bombs.

The Slidstvo.Info journalists found out who is shelling Beryslav and where the warplanes with bombs are taking off from.

RUSSIANS ARE LEVELLING THE CITY TO THE GROUND

“Go and hug your grandfather. Maybe you won’t see him again,” a father tells a teenager from Beryslav. 

The child and his family were evacuated, but the elderly man stayed in the city.

Along with them, on the morning of 30 October, the police evacuated 4 families with children and a grandparent from the city, where the security situation was extremely difficult. The special operation was carried out under heavy fire: first, the occupiers dropped ammunition from drones on residential areas, then covered the city with mortar fire and fired from a tank. 

“Beryslav suffers from enemy attacks every hour, the army of the terrorist country drops 15 guided bombs at a time, levelling the city to the ground, the situation is getting worse every day,” Kherson police wrote.

Before the full-scale invasion, the city was home to about 12,000 people. Now, according to the authorities, there are about 2,000. Every day, the enemy sends guided and high-explosive bombs to Beryslav. This leads to local deaths and massive destruction.

Photo from the Facebook page “Ukrainian South”

On 28 October, the enemy fired 10 guided aerial bombs at Beryslav within 30 minutes. Powerful explosions damaged 9 private houses. There was not a single surviving apartment in a five-storey building, and a 72-year-old man was wounded. 

Late in the evening of the same day, the Russians launched 8 more guided bombs at the city. A drone dropped a munition on a police car.

At dawn on 26 October, the Russian military attacked Beryslav from the air. A man died under the rubble of his own house, garages and 14 private houses were damaged. 

And 3 hours later, the occupiers struck the city for the second time with guided aerial bombs, destroying another 10 residential buildings. In the evening, the Russians shelled Beryslav with artillery. A 13-year-old boy was killed by an enemy shell on the street, and two other men were wounded.

And so it is every day in Beryslav. Russians are hitting civilian objects. On 5 October, the occupiers dropped a guided aerial bomb on a hospital and an emergency station. A driver and a paramedic were injured.

WHO IS SHELLING BERYSLAV

The Odesa Operational and Strategic Group of Forces says that the occupiers are attacking the city from aircraft from the Southern and Eastern Military Districts of the Russian Armed Forces. All aircraft are temporarily based at the airfields of the Southern Military District. Russian troops are carrying out air strikes with SU-34 bombers.

A Russian SU-34 bomber

According to the Ukrainian military, on 5 October, the day the occupiers dropped bombs on the hospital and emergency station, Beryslav was attacked by aircraft from the 4th State Centre for Aviation Personnel Training and Military Testing of the Russian Ministry of Defence (Lipetsk Aviation Centre).

Since August 2022, Colonel Nikolai Myshkin has been the head of the Lipetsk Aviation Centre.

Russian Colonel Nikolai Myshkin

In 1996, Myshkin entered the Kachinsk Military School. Two years later, the cadets were transferred to the Armavir Higher Military Aviation School of Air Defence Pilots. 

In 2008, he was deployed to the city of Krymsk (Krasnodar Territory, Russia) as a deputy commander of an aviation squadron. In 2012, Myshkin was transferred to Lipetsk. 

Also, according to Ukrainian defenders, on 5 October, fighter jets from the Lipetsk air centre took off from the Marinovka airfield in Volgograd Oblast. During the full-scale invasion, the Russians began to use the airfield for attacks on Ukraine.

Slidstvo.Info journalists found satellite images from there, taken in October 2022.

These photos show SU-34 bombers, which are very easy to recognise even in poor quality images due to their bright blue colour.

The aircraft are lined up in a row. Next to them are stacked objects that look like guided bombs. However, all the military personnel interviewed by the journalists are convinced that no one would store ammunition in this way.

“These are most likely containers for X-59 missiles. Containers for spent missiles. If you see an enlarged photo, there are a lot of different warehouses where weapons can be stored. Because weapons will not just lie in the open air, they are stored indoors. These precision-guided aircraft missiles cannot be stored in the open air,” says aviation expert Anatoliy Khrapchynsky.

Khrapchynsky also noticed that in addition to SU-34s, there are SU-24s. And for security purposes, the Russians have put in another air defence system. 

The expert also noted that sometimes the occupiers resort to military tactics to prevent Ukrainians from tracking where the planes take off from. 

“They can take off from there, they can take off from Yeysk, and at the same time do some pirouettes to make it difficult to understand where they are coming from,” Khrapchynskyi said.

Sources in the Ukrainian air defence forces confirmed the same to Slidstvo.Info. According to them, the planes are indeed “covering” each other. 

According to the air defence forces, airfields from Yeysk, Akhtubinsk, Primorsko-Akhtarsk and Maikop are also used to attack Beryslav. 

Screenshot of the airfield from Maikop

On the ground, according to the Odesa Operational and Strategic Group of Forces, Beryslav is shelled by the 205th Motorised Rifle and 227th Artillery Brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army of the Russian Federation. According to the Deepstate map, the 144th Motorised Rifle Brigade is also stationed there. 

The 227th Artillery Brigade of the Russian Army is stationed in the city of Maikop (Republic of Adygea). It is armed with Msta-B and Msta-S howitzers, Uragan multiple rocket launcher systems, SPAR-10M1 Panther and Zoo-1 artillery reconnaissance stations, Takhion drones, and Strelets reconnaissance, command and control and communications systems.

From 2018 to May 2022, the brigade was commanded by Alexei Repin. Since then, it has been commanded by Alexei Bulanov.

Earlier, Slidstvo.Info journalists, together with colleagues from the Schemes project (Radio Liberty), investigated the 205th Brigade of the Russian Army: they identified the occupiers and their commanders, and received exclusive intercepts of conversations that took place between the military on the night of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station explosion.

The material has been prepared with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework of the joint initiative “European Renaissance of Ukraine”. The material represents the position of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Union or the International Renaissance Foundation.