Tour of the towns located around the Ukrainian capital, converted into the showcase of horror after the Russian occupation
Vladimir Putin believed that his troops would take kyiv in a matter of days. He was wrong. The Ukrainians defended the capital tooth and nail and managed to repel the invasion. However, it is enough to travel a few kilometers in any direction to certify that the Russians were very close to reaching their objective. They settled in many small towns around the city and launched missiles on some neighborhoods that remained behind the defense lines. Even today loud bangs are heard at night. On Friday the invaders blew up a nearby missile factory and this morning they repeated the bombardments at points on the outskirts, which is why the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, yesterday asked those who fled the war not to return yet. And residents who stayed fear Putin will make good on his promise to step up airstrikes on kyiv in retaliation for Ukrainian incursions into various enclaves inside Russian territory.
For now, the occupying troops have been in retreat to focus on the offensive against the Russian-speaking region of Donbas. But behind them they have left a trail of dead people –they don’t claim them– and mountains of scrap metal. As reported yesterday by the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, the Russian ‘special military operation’ has already claimed the lives of between 2,500 and 3,000 of his soldiers, although he puts the casualties suffered by Putin’s troops at up to 20,000, whose regime only recognizes 1,351. However, analysts assume that Zelensky and his cabinet, like Moscow, try to hide the magnitude of the tragedy by lowering the numbers and that in reality the local troops have lost many more troops than they admit.
Unfortunately, countless civilians have also perished. Around a thousand alone in the ring of death that surrounds kyiv, where there are still many corpses to be discovered. The destruction is comparable to that suffered in Syria or Sarajevo. “The buildings are rebuilt, but the soul is not,” says Oksana Furman, a resident of Dmitrivka, one of the first towns that fell into Russian hands in early March. The physical wounds are visible in endless rows of smashed houses, but the neighbors hide the emotional ones as best they can.
«The Russians stationed several tanks at the confluence of the streets and, from there, they shot at everyone who tried to leave. We feared that, if we didn’t die from cannon fire, we would die from hunger », recalls Furman, who demonstrates the veracity of his words with some videos that he recorded from the window of his house. It cost him dearly, because a shell entered through it, went through the wall of the room and blew up the kitchen. In the garden there are still shrapnel and large-caliber shell casings.
“The soldiers slept in the basement, and when they left, they broke the generator,” says Furman, whose family has been without basic supplies since the beginning of the invasion. But he thanks God that he is still alive, and crosses himself in front of a religious image with a bullet hole next to it. “Many of the dead were thrown into the gutter and their bodies were passed over with the tanks,” he says, unable to hold back his tears. “They even crushed the graves in the cemetery,” he adds. The broken perimeter of the graveyard and the treads of caterpillars on some shattered tombstones attest to this.
But the tanks that terrorized the town are now smashed. One of the soldiers who helped destroy them acknowledges that his unit suffered many casualties in a fierce fight, but is convinced that he was worth it. “They did not manage to reach kyiv,” he adds before asking for a portrait in front of one of the Russian T-72s that flew with anti-tank projectiles like those manufactured by the Aragonese Instalanza.
a gigantic hole
The villages of small single-family houses have suffered, but the devastation is much greater in towns such as Hostomel, Bucha or Borodyanka, where powerful Russian missiles hit large blocks of flats. Gazisov Eusten lived in one of the apartments built just a few years ago in Irpin by the construction company Comfort Life Development. Today, not one of the windows remains intact and several of the rooms have large holes in the walls. The furniture has become unusable, and he survives with a meager help from the Government.
“We bought the house for the equivalent of $63,000 in 2012. All of our savings went there, and now I don’t have the strength to rebuild. I am morally devastated », says Eusten as he removes the broken windows, the smashed doors, and the blackened furniture. He is alone, because the rest of the family has fled to the west of the country. “I tried to convince my daughter to go to Europe, but she has decided to stay to take care of her mother,” he recounts.
Other residents are indeed trying to rebuild their homes in the Eusten block. Some plug holes and clean up traces of the fire, but fear the effort will be in vain if Russia resumes its attack on kyiv. In Horenka, Taldonova Elena, an Uzbek who has lived in Ukraine for decades, has nothing to rebuild: her apartment has disappeared.
Where it was, in a four-story ocher brick building, only a gigantic hole remains. From the adjoining doorway you can see a living room with an open sofa bed, a tiger poster in the room below and toys scattered around another room where children lived. Now, all of it faces directly onto the street because the walls are a heap of rubble four stories below. “The first week we were hidden in the basement, until they managed to evacuate us,” recalls Elena, a worker at the Swiss logistics company Kuehne+Nagel, whose pavilion has been reduced to a twisted mess of sheet metal a few meters away. “At least the company cares about our material well-being,” praises the woman.
The only one who refuses to leave the block is a grandmother with severe deafness, exacerbated by the roar of the bombs. She lives in a dilapidated apartment on the ground floor, without any supplies or windows, although some neighbors have helped her cover them with plastic. “I have nowhere to go,” she tells her with the lost look of her sitting on a bench next to what was a playground.
expensive reconstruction
Reconstruction will be expensive and time consuming. For now, after repelling the invasion on the outskirts of kyiv, the priority is to restore electricity and telecommunications. The latter are simpler, because many of the mobile signal towers are still standing, but the power lines require much more effort. “The tanks have destroyed many poles and all the cables have to be changed,” says an electric company operator as he uses a crane to repair the lines.
Road infrastructure is also in ruins. “In the beginning, our military destroyed some bridges to prevent the advance of the Russians, who also bombed others. In addition, Putin put gas stations and supermarkets in his sights to avoid supplying our troops, ”says a police officer who identifies himself only as Ivan and who accompanies us through the interior of what was a large supermarket in Hostomel. Until several missiles turned it into a black cave in which only light enters through the holes in the ceiling: everything is burned, except for some shelves where, surprisingly, there is still food and drink that no one has touched. “There is fear that something will explode,” says Ivan, who acknowledges a reasonable degree of paranoia as he points to an ownerless shoe on the ground.
“If you see the corpses as family or friends, something changes inside you”
Men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave Ukraine. They must fight for the country, whether in the regular Army, in the Territorial Defense Forces or as volunteers in other essential tasks. For this reason, it is not uncommon to find young people with very different professions in uniform and with an AK-47 slung over their shoulders. Even internationally recognized researchers, such as a professor and mathematical analyst who was notified a few days ago at the front that he had received the main prize of the largest academic science institution in Hungary.
All of them have received a crash course in combat and are now stationed at checkpoints, participating in aid distribution and, in the most unfortunate cases, fighting in besieged cities in the east of the country: from Kharkov to Mariupol, where the greatest carnage of this war.
Serhii Selivanov has been luckier and is stationed in Bucha, the scene of another massacre but now a calm town. It is clear that he is not a soldier: with several piercings in different parts of his body and a stretching ring in his ear, he is far removed from the aesthetics of those who regularly wear camouflage clothing. “Before the invasion I was dedicated to the special effects of series and movies,” he says with a smile that is difficult to decipher.
“I never thought I would get to see corpses so closely. Now I realize that the real ones don’t have much to do with the ones I prepared, although my brain leads me to think that they are the ones from my work. I prefer it, because if you see them as friends or relatives, something changes within you, “says Selivanov, who also works in the management of humanitarian corridors and in the reception of internally displaced persons who come from the most punished areas. “When this is all over, the trauma will continue for years. Above all, in people like us, who are not military but we are forced to act as such, “advances the young man.
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