The cell phone was in the way of the shrapnel of the grape bomb and saved the life of truck driver Serhii Ohrimenko. The truck drivers whistling on the edge of the soybean field told HS what it feels like to be in the middle of a missile strike.
Sthis is also a joke. Not even a word.
Sixteen destroyed grain trucks stand on the edge of a soybean field.
Some of the trucks have carbonized knobs, some of the windshield has a single shard. Almost everyone’s tires are flat and the trailer is in tatters.
It’s the first day of September.
Four war crimes investigators from the Ukrainian security service SBU are standing on the edge of a soybean field. They measure bits and pieces from Iskanders and cluster bombs. They photograph the hole made by the missile on the side of the field and interview the truck drivers.
They ask that they not be disturbed or photographed in an identifiable way.
The tail of the Iskander missile lay in a field.
The field is in the village of Veliki Bobrik, or Big Beaver.
Truck driver Vyacheslav Kalinechenko stands stupidly in front of the destroyed cabin of his truck and videos the destruction for the government and the insurance company. In the hope that someday someone will replace something from the knob of the truck that Russia destroyed into a pile of coal.
There are no guarantees of compensation – everything else. Millions of people in Ukraine have lost their relatives, property, jobs or health due to Russian attacks.
The Volvo truck breaking down on the edge of the soybean field was the livelihood of the Kalinechenko family. With the truck now a charred skeleton, there is nothing left. Kalinechenko says he needs help. His 19-year-old daughter has arrived at the wreckage of the truck to help Zhanna.
“I don’t understand why Russia hates Ukraine so much,” Kalinechenko says.
Vyatseslav Kalinetsenko said that he was preparing food next to the trailer when the attack happened.
The license plate of Vyatseslav Kalinetsenko’s truck melted in the heat generated by the impact.
On the ground next to the Volvo are the remains of the truck drivers’ dinner from yesterday. Five drivers ate fish soup, omelette, fried potatoes and gravy together. They seem to have had a couple of beers to kick off the party.
Suddenly, in the darkness of the evening, there was a nasty whistle, in a way that almost everyone living in Ukraine recognizes. It was a matter of seconds. The food stayed put. The first Iskander missile flared up, bursting into a hellish explosion and igniting a sea of fire among the trucks.
According to the war crime investigators present, one of the Iskanders that crashed into the field had a cluster bomb, which would indicate a completely new model of missile.
Truck drivers crawl under the truck for cover. Kalinechenko survived uninjured, although the knob of the truck is now made of coal.
“If the missile had come an hour later, we would all have been sleeping in the cabins of the trucks and we would be dead now,” he says.
The youngest of the drivers, only 23 years old Eduard Lešinkadied in the attack. He was sleeping in his bunk when a shrapnel from a cluster bomb pierced his skull. Death was the blink of an eye.
Lešinka reportedly drove only his fifth truck gig. Six more experienced drivers were badly injured, they were covered in blood on the edge of the soybean field.
They started to calm down in the direction of the main road.
23-year-old driver Eduard Lesinka was killed by the knob of his truck.
Anatolii Kutshmenko, 54, was behind his trailer at the time of the attack.
Vi.e. the village of Bobrik is in Sumy, in the northern region of Ukraine, from where its troops made a successful surprise attack on the Russian side of Kursk in early August.
Russia has retaliated against the attack with numerous missile strikes on civilian targets in Sumy.
A 32-year-old journalist from Sumy was the first to drive past the missile’s impact site Aljona Yatšyna.
He had been visiting relatives in the village of Veliki Bobrik and was returning to the city of Sumy. In the middle of the darkness, first a series of flashes rumbled, then a big bright thump. Yatšyna drove to the place, even though she knew she was taking a big risk. Russia can strike the same place again immediately.
“I saw twenty men in the middle of the thick smoke. I thought it couldn’t be a good thing,” Jatšyna tells Helsingin Sanomat fresh after the attack.
Some of the truck drivers were covered in blood. Yatšyna got four of them to fit in her car and drove off to the hospital.
“I told you to choose the four worst wounded,” says Jatšyna.
Reporter Aljona Jatšyna saved four truck drivers to the hospital.
Russia’s missile strike against trucks carrying soybeans is extremely uncivilized, no matter how you look at it. It was a war crime against civilians, but it was also unjust warfare.
Russia stowed three million-euro Iskander missiles in empty grain trucks. Russia is only able to produce a limited number of Iskanders.
The trucks were only supposed to be filled with soybeans the next day and driven to the city of Pultava.
Aljona Jatšyna drove twenty kilometers to Sumy, the capital of the region, as if possessed.
One of the truck drivers on board had an unnaturally bloated stomach during the journey. He apparently had severe internal bleeding. He complained that he couldn’t breathe. One of the men was covered in blood and had large shrapnel wounds on different parts of his body.
The screen of the man’s cell phone was destroyed by a splinter. He asked that Yatšyna call his wife from her own phone and tell her that the man is alive after all.
Yatchyna drove the unwell men to the hospital. They were immediately taken to intensive care.
Lwe are a truck driver Serhii Ohrimenko the next day from the hospital in Sumy.
We are in the hospital yard, because we can only interview him outside and secretly from the doctors. Ohrimenko is plump. He chain smokes and displays his missile injuries from last night like badges from a veterans organization.
“Shit about injuries,” he says.
What a mobile phone story. Could it be true?
Ohrimenko shows his cell phone. Its windshield is completely shattered. It has actually been hit by a fragment of a grape shell. The cell phone was in his front pocket and saved his life. Without it, the shrapnel would have hit the groin and caused severe bleeding in the artery.
According to the doctor, Serhii Ohrimenko survived the attack thanks to his cell phone.
The shrapnel hit the cell phone in Serhii Ohrimenko’s pocket.
The truck driver makes the sign of the Orthodox cross. Here it is being caked, alive. He shows the bandage on his left shoulder blade, under which the body is bulging completely unnaturally. Under the shoulder blade is a large fragment from an Iskander missile cluster bomb.
The doctor said they can’t get the splinter out yet, because it’s deep. First, I have to wait for the injury to recover a bit and then cut the splinter out.
Next to Ohrimenko is his 39-year-old wife Jelena Jarmakovič. This seems to be a more fearless character than her husband.
“When Russia strikes, we go ashore and after that we just shake the dust off our clothes,” Jarmakovič says.
He says he turned 39 two days ago. The day before that, Russia attacked his workplace, a packaging factory. A day later it hit her husband’s truck.
The calmness of Ukrainians in the midst of terrible things is calming.
Two days after the truck attack, Russia attacks an orphanage in Sumy. Residents of the area flock to the scene of the destruction in a casual manner. Two young girls start filming a Tiktok video.
Silence is not only a good thing. Many feel numb to the everyday life of war, where any evil is possible or even probable. The sounds of airstrikes don’t startle unless they hit very close.
Tok even the ukrainian trucker has a point where the protection drops and the mask disappears.
For Serhii Ohrimenko, that point comes when he sends his savior Aljona Jatšyna a video message. He thanks Yatšyna profusely. Suddenly, Ohrimenko feels as if he realizes how unimaginably close the departure was.
He starts to wipe the corners of his eyes.
Serhii Ohrimenko wiped his tears when telling how close he came to death.
Soon, Ohrimenko’s cell phone flashes. Aljona Jatšyna has answered immediately: Oh my gosh! I’m crying. I’m so happy you’re alive.
Ohrimenko still has quite a bit to celebrate.
A fragment of an Iskander missile cluster bomb is still inside his body. It’s horrible to think about, it now carries Russian military industry inside it.
Is this kind of suffering worth it all? Is Ohrimenko going to continue as a truck driver, even though Russia is still attacking grain trucks as well?
The question seems somehow strange to Ohrimenko. What else could he do. He has to make a living somehow.
Besides, he is a Ukrainian truck driver. In such a profession, it seems part of the social role is to accept whatever comes your way.
The new cigarette is already in Ohrimenko’s mouth. Here’s more. At one point, the soybean truck is again driven through a country at war.
“C’est la vie”, he sums up.
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