From an AP story by Hanna Arhirova headlined “”We survived’: Kherson comes alive after Russian withdrawal”:

A week since the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was liberated, residents can’t escape reminders of the terrifying eight months they spent under Russian occupation.

People are missing. There are mines everywhere, closed shops and restaurants, a scarcity of electricity and water, and explosions day and night as Russian and Ukrainian forces battle just across the Dnieper River.

Despite the hardships, residents are expressing a mix of relief, optimism, and even joy — not least because of their regained freedom to express themselves at all.

From Politico Playbook by Ryan Lizza and Eugene Daniels:

War in Ukraine

“Russian forces attacked civilian areas in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as terrified residents joined an exodus of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing westward, heeding warnings by authorities that Russian troops were massing for a major assault,” NYT’s Cora Engelbrecht, David Zucchino and Jane Arraf report.

What’s next? 

— From Ukraine: “Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY warned Sunday in his nightly address to the nation that the coming week would be as crucial as any in the war, saying ‘Russian troops will move to even larger operations in the east of our state,’” AP’s Adam Schreck and Cara Anna report. … David Cohen has more on Zelenskyy’s “60 Minutes” interview

From CJR’s The Media Today by Jon Allsop:

The fog of war, a month in

“THE RUSSIANS WERE HUNTING US DOWN. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in.” Thus begins a gut-wrenching, and widely-shared, reflection by Mstyslav Chernov—an Associated Press reporter who, along with his colleague Evgeniy Maloletka, was the last international journalist inside the heavily besieged city of Mariupol—on his coverage of the carnage that Russian forces have wreaked there. Chernov and Maloletka set off for Mariupol a month ago today, arriving early the next day, one hour before Russia invaded Ukraine. “Few people believed a war was coming, and by the time most realized their mistake, it was too late,” Chernov recalls. “One bomb at a time, the Russians cut electricity, water, food supplies and finally, crucially, the cell phone, radio and television towers. The few other journalists in the city got out before the last connections were gone and a full blockade settled in.” The deaths, he says, “came fast.”