No, this is not Kiryat Shmona: this is the story of a Ukrainian village Vyshetarasivka, which also faced the war alone

No, this is not Kiryat Shmona after another attack by Hezbollah from the Lebanese direction. This is not an Israeli border town where people know what alarms, evacuations, empty streets, closed schools, fear of drones, and waiting for a new rocket are. In the video is the Ukrainian village of Vyshetarasivka in the Nikopol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region, about ten kilometers from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant occupied by Russian terrorists.

For an Israeli, this picture is painfully recognizable: destroyed houses, dangerous roads, the inability to call for help normally, and the feeling that the world quickly gets used to someone else’s pain. But while in northern Israel civilians have been under threat from Hezbollah for years, in Vyshetarasivka people are daily finished off by Russian terrorists — with artillery, Grads, and FPV drones. The village has no stable water, electricity, or communication, medics, police, and rescuers cannot always come, and about 600 residents continue to survive practically at gunpoint from the enemy.

Vyshetarasivka was once an ordinary Ukrainian village where people went for vegetables, strawberries, and apricots. Now it is a place where people live without water, electricity, and communication, extinguish fires themselves, and the body of a deceased woman had to be transported on a regular wheelbarrow for 12 kilometers.

The story of a Ukrainian village left without water, electricity, communication, and help — at the very edge of the Russian war

In Ukraine, there are places where war has long ceased to be news and has become a daily routine.

There, people do not discuss the front as a line on a map because the front is heard above their homes, seen in broken roofs, and felt in every trip for water, food, or medicine. There, an ordinary road to the district center becomes a life risk, a store becomes a military target, and after a fire, people do not wait for firefighters — because they know that firefighters are unlikely to be able to come.

One such place is Vyshetarasivka in the Nikopol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Here it is on Google Maps.

TSN on July 8, 2026, showed this village in a report about the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding practically before our eyes but remains almost invisible to the outside world. Vyshetarasivka is located about ten kilometers from the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Enerhodar. According to local residents and TSN journalists, Russian strikes from the occupied territory reach here daily.

The village lives without normal water, without stable electricity, without mobile communication, without medics, without police, and without the possibility of relying on firefighters after shelling.

And yet about 600 people remain there.

The village opposite the occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP

At the entrance to Vyshetarasivka, it is immediately clear where the trouble came from. The occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, is literally “in plain sight” — about ten kilometers away. After Russian troops settled there back in 2022, the village opposite became one of the civilian targets in the Nikopol region.

Initially, Vyshetarasivka was hit by artillery and Grads, then FPV drones were added to this. For residents, this changed the very logic of everyday life: it became dangerous not only to stay at home during shelling but also to go outside, go for groceries, move by bicycle or motorcycle, try to reach the district center.

In the TSN report, a local resident says that to get to the district center, people need to walk about 15 kilometers under drones that fly and kill people. In peaceful life, 15 kilometers is a short distance. In a frontline village under FPV drones, this is already a route where a person does not know if they will return.

One of the strikes destroyed a store — almost the last one in the village where you could still buy groceries. Nearby, there used to be a market where vegetables and other products from local farms were sold. Now, according to residents, this is no longer there. For a city, losing a store may be an inconvenience, but for such a village, it is a blow to the entire survival system because a store in rural life is not only groceries but also a place of communication between people, news exchange, and organization of help.

Before the full-scale war, Vyshetarasivka and the Nikopol region as a whole were famous for vegetables and fruits. People came here for juicy strawberries, apricots, homemade products, for what was grown on local land. But after the Russian undermining of the Kakhovka HPP, water left the region, and growing vegetables became extremely difficult. What used to be the basis of rural life has become almost impossible.

Water is worth its weight in gold

Water today is one of the main symbols of the catastrophe in Vyshetarasivka.

After the destruction of the Kakhovka HPP, people practically began to divide water “by drops.” In the report, residents say they take water from wells at neighbors’, go to acquaintances, use boreholes, share with each other what is left. This is not a normal water supply system, but a survival mode where each family depends on neighbors, a random opportunity to collect water, and whether the next strike will destroy another source.

A great hope for the village was a water purification station provided by partners from Denmark. Thanks to it, local residents gained access to quality drinking water, and in the conditions of destroyed infrastructure, this was not just a convenience but practically salvation.

But this help lasted only until the next Russian shelling.

According to TSN, the station was located in the building of an old hospital where drinking water was distributed. After the strike, the building was destroyed, the roof was damaged, a fire broke out inside, and the equipment was destroyed. The vehicle that delivered water to the village was also destroyed, so water delivery was suspended at the time of the report.

As a result, only wells remained in the village. People use them for hygiene, cooking, and simply to drink. But a well cannot replace a full-fledged water supply, especially when after each Russian strike, houses, barns, streets, and farm buildings can catch fire.

This is where the humanitarian problem turns into a mortal threat.

When there is no water, there is nothing to extinguish fires with. When there is nothing to extinguish fires with, each new strike can destroy an entire street. When firefighters cannot enter due to drones and shelling, people are left alone with the fire.

In the TSN report, locals say they try to extinguish with their own efforts: what they could do, they did, how much water there was, they used. But these efforts are clearly not enough because we are not talking about a random household fire, but about the consequences of regular strikes on a populated area.

When medics, police, and DSNS do not come

The hardest part of Vyshetarasivka’s story is that the village was practically cut off from emergency assistance. According to the participants in the report, medics, police, and firefighters do not come here. The reason is clear — safety, constant strikes, drones, the risk of repeated hits. But for people who remain in the village, this explanation does not solve the main problem: after the shelling, they still need help.

DSNS units cannot enter fires that, according to local representatives, have been occurring in the village almost every day since early June due to drone strikes. At the same time, many elderly people remain in Vyshetarasivka, and they are in the most dangerous situation. If a house catches fire, an elderly person may simply not have time to get out, not be able to extinguish the fire, and not wait for professional help.

The report contains a terrifying phrase: something irreparable can happen when an elderly person can burn alive.

This is not an exaggeration. This is a real risk in a village where there is no normal water, no communication, no stable electricity, and firefighters cannot safely arrive.

Mobile communication in Vyshetarasivka disappeared more than two years ago. There has been no electricity since May. For a modern person, this is hard to imagine: after a strike, you cannot just call an ambulance, send a geolocation, write to relatives, call the police, or receive an official warning. People live in informational darkness, where much depends on neighbors, personal courage, and chance.

One of the residents directly says: “We are not needed by anyone.” According to her, the head of the community seems to have forgotten that such a village exists, and the remaining “handful” of people do everything themselves: repair gas, electricity, pull water, fix roofs.

This is a very important part of the story. Russian terrorists destroy the village with shelling, but the humanitarian catastrophe is exacerbated where people do not feel sufficient support from local and regional authorities. In frontline conditions, you cannot just tell people “evacuate” and consider the issue closed because among those who remain are many elderly, lonely, sick, and those who really have nowhere to go.

NANovosti — Israel News | Nikk.Agency writes about Ukraine through such stories because they show not an abstract “situation at the front,” but the specific price of war for civilians. For an Israeli reader, this is especially understandable: when drones and shelling change everyday life, when emergency services cannot work freely, when people in border and frontline areas become hostages of threats, it is not only about the military map but about the human right to basic safety.

The body of the deceased was transported on a wheelbarrow for 12 kilometers

The most terrible detail of the report is the story of the dead and wounded, who cannot be properly delivered to medics or taken away after death.

Local residents say that the hardest thing is to deliver the wounded to the hospital. One of the residents died because he could not be transferred to professional medics in time. The body of another deceased woman, according to people, was not taken for more than three days.

And the last story was a shock for the village: the body of the deceased woman had to be transported on a regular wheelbarrow for 12 kilometers.

This detail sounds almost impossible for the 21st century, but it explains the scale of the catastrophe better than any general formulations. War here deprives a person not only of safety in life but also of dignity after death. If the body of the deceased has to be transported on a wheelbarrow for many kilometers because no one can come in the usual way, it means that not only the infrastructure is destroyed, but the very system of human assistance.

This is no longer just a “frontline difficulty.” This is a state in which a civilian village lives next to a constant threat and does not have guaranteed access to basic services: doctors, police, rescuers, transport, communication, and water.

These are the stories that should be heard outside Ukraine. Because in dry reports, there is often talk of strikes, damage, settlements, and consequences. But behind the word “consequences” sometimes stands the body of a woman being transported on a wheelbarrow for 12 kilometers.

Evacuation that came too late for many

According to the report, despite the difficult situation, the evacuation of families with children in Vyshetarasivka was announced only in May. But even after that, elderly people remain in the village, holding on to their homes and having nowhere to go.

For a person who has lived in one village all their life, evacuation is not just a move from a dangerous place to a safe one. It is the loss of home, land, farm, neighbors, the usual circle of life, the graves of relatives, and the last sense of control over one’s own destiny. Transit centers, as locals say, provide only temporary accommodation, and people need to understand where they will live next, what to buy food with, how to get medicine, and who will help if they are infirm or lonely.

Therefore, many remain. Not because they do not understand the danger, but because the choice between a destroyed home and the unknown often does not seem like a real choice.

Residents ask local and regional authorities for at least the most basic: to bring food and accompany medics so that they can enter the village. They cite the neighboring village of Bilenke in the Zaporizhzhia region, which is also actively shelled by Russian troops from the opposite bank. According to residents, local and regional authorities there try to organize the accompaniment of services that can enter the village and also deliver food.

Vyshetarasivka is not asking for the impossible. People are not talking about restoring normal life tomorrow morning. They are asking for food, water, medics, service accompaniment, and a minimal system of help for those who still remain within shooting distance of the enemy.

Why the story of Vyshetarasivka is important for Israel

No, Vyshetarasivka is not Kiryat Shmona, not Metula, and not one of the Israeli settlements on the border with Lebanon that live under the threat of Hezbollah. But an Israeli does not need a long explanation of what it means to have a house that can be hit at any moment; what an empty street means, fear of a drone, a road that is only traveled because there is no other choice, and the anxious feeling that normal life has suddenly become life by survival rules.

That is why the story of the Ukrainian village of Vyshetarasivka should not sound to Israel like a distant tragedy from someone else’s war. In northern Israel, civilians have been under threat from Hezbollah for years. In the Nikopol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region, people are daily terrorized by Russian terrorists — with artillery, Grads, FPV drones, and strikes from the occupied territory near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Different countries, different fronts, different circumstances — but the logic of terror against civilians is recognizable.

Vyshetarasivka shows another level of war: when a settlement is not just shelled but gradually deprived of everything that keeps people in human conditions. No water — means you cannot drink, cook, wash, or extinguish fires after arrivals. No communication — means you cannot call an ambulance, police, rescuers, or at least inform relatives that you are alive. No electricity — means people remain in the dark, without normal access to information, medicine, phone charging, and basic household warmth. No medics — means an injury can become fatal not only because of its severity but because the person cannot be delivered to the hospital in time.

The Russian war against Ukraine is not only missiles on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, or Dnipro. It is also such villages where every day there is a slow destruction of civilian life. Vyshetarasivka is not a military base, not a political center, and has no honest meaning as a “target.” Its only “guilt” in the eyes of Russian terrorists is that Ukrainian civilians remain there, continuing to live opposite the occupied territory.

When Russian strikes destroy a store, market, water purification station, water delivery vehicle, house roofs, and the very possibility of calling for help, this cannot be attributed to “accidental consequences of war.” This is the destruction of the environment in which civilians can survive. And for Israel, which knows the price of terror against civilians, the story of Vyshetarasivka should sound directly: terror remains terror, regardless of whether a missile flies from the Lebanese direction or an FPV drone from the territory occupied by Russian troops.

The story of one village — an indictment against the entire Russian war

Vyshetarasivka is the story of one Ukrainian village that used to live on vegetables, fruits, markets, water, and ordinary rural work. Now it lives on wells, broken roofs, drones, lack of communication, fires after shelling, and waiting for help that does not always come.

About 600 residents remain in this village.

They live near the occupied nuclear power plant, from where the threat to the entire region came. They know that after the next strike, houses may catch fire again, and there will be nothing to extinguish them with. They know that if someone feels unwell, it will be difficult for medics to reach the village. They know that the road to the district center is not just a road, but a path under drones.

And they know that the world often gets tired of such stories.

But these are the stories that cannot be ignored. Because if we do not talk about Vyshetarasivka, it will become just another point on the map of the war. But in reality, it is a living village where people still hold on, help each other, repair roofs, look for water, transport the wounded, and ask for help.

When the body of a deceased woman is transported on a wheelbarrow for 12 kilometers, it is no longer a local tragedy. It is an indictment against Russian aggression, against strikes on civilians, against the use of occupied territories and the proximity of a nuclear facility as a tool of pressure, against indifference to those who remain in frontline villages without water, electricity, communication, and help.

Vyshetarasivka today reminds the world of a simple thing: war is measured not only by kilometers of the front, the number of missiles, and political statements.

It is measured by whether a person can turn on a tap.

Can call an ambulance.

Can buy bread.

Can extinguish their own house.

Can bury the deceased humanely.

In Vyshetarasivka, the answer to all these questions is becoming increasingly difficult.

And that is why this village needs to be talked about.

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