“This is genocide, the fucking Russian soldiers killed my two nephews! They were 3 and 15 years old! Please let Europe stop this massacre!”
It is the desperate voice of Elena Klymenko, a 38-year-old woman I met when I arrived in Kiev less than two weeks ago, with whom I had a chilling phone conversation this morning. And whose story I write now to continue telling this increasingly tragic, inexplicable, cruel, frightening war.
(Minute by minute: this is how the war between Ukraine and Russia unfolds)
I met Elena on the Ryanair flight that took me from Rome to Kiev on February 23rd. As I told in my first note of this coverage, in which I described her Gucci bag, her iPhone watch on her wrist -her elegance-, Elena was returning with a friend from a long weekend vacation in Rome planned long before , when they had found very cheap tickets.
A weekend in Rome that had turned into a nightmare for both of them due to the winds of war that had already begun to blow stronger. than ever on Monday, February 21, when Vladimir Putin announced the decision to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed separatist republics of the Donbass region, in the southeast, in an aggressive speech in which he accused the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky, of being a puppet of the West. It was the pretext that he later used to launch the total invasion and the bombs.
As she was very kind, friendly and gave me a first glimpse of the situation, with Elena, who was sitting next to me, we exchanged telephone contacts. In addition, as he spoke perfect Italian because in his childhood he had been part of the so-called “Chernobyl boys” whom many Italian families invited to spend a month of vacation during the summer, he even offered to accompany me the next day for a tour of Kiev, acting as interpreter.
The plan of course changed abruptly because hours later, in the early hours of February 24, the air raid alarm sirens began to sound, the bombs began to fall and the great exodus from Kiev began, with traffic jams on all the highways.
“I can’t go to your hotel,” Elena wrote to me that morning on WhatsApp, who by audio – with a very agitated voice – told me that she had spent two hours trying to fill up with gasoline but that she hadn’t succeeded. He also sent me photos taken from the window of his apartment, with neighbors carrying the trunk to escape from Kiev and collapsing the elevator in his building.
Since Elena has an 11-year-old son, Kirill, to take care of, I thought it best to leave her alone.
Days later, I contacted her again via WhatsApp, to ask her how she was. With a relieved voice and despite the fact that she had told me at the beginning that she was not going to leave Ukraine in case of war because she was not going to leave her parents, now elderly, Elena gave me the great news that she was already safe and sound in Italy, in a town on Lago di Como, together with his son. Her escape from Kiev had been very hard, but she had done it.
The “angels” of flight
“I’m in the shit. They killed my nephews,” she replied, leaving me cold. And this exchange of messages followed:
– What?
– Yes, they killed my two nephews.
“After spending the whole day at home, on the 24th, and a night in the catacombs [como llamaba el refugio] With my son who was trembling and me who was crying, the next day we wanted to get out of the catacombs, but we couldn’t because they were bombing. And we made the decision to leave in 5 seconds, really, 5 seconds,” he said. “I grabbed a backpack, put money, documents, pajamas, a change of clothes and nothing else. And we ran away. My ex-husband, Kirill’s father, accompanied us to the border. And since it was not possible, and it is not possible now, to escape with the car because there was a 24-hour queue to cross, in the end we decided to reach the border with Moldova on foot, walking, ”he recounted. Had he taken photos of that escape on foot? “No, at that time I was crying.”
Elena later recounted that on the other side of the border she found several “angels”: “a lot of people helped us, opened the doors of their houses, fed us, and took us to Chisinau, the capital of Moldova… They organized a transport for us to Iasi, a Romanian city where there is an airport and there we bought plane tickets and flew to Italy”. She also sent me the photo of the article that a local newspaper had written about her odyssey to escape, the video of an interview she had given to Italian TV: she had become one of the first Ukrainian refugees to arrive in Italy. Now there are about 17,000.
He was going to write his happy ending story. But the hard and raw events of the following days dictated another agenda. Yesterday afternoon, I sent him a new WhatsApp to tell him that I had finally left Kiev, that I was in Romania and about to travel to Warsaw to re-enter Ukraine. And to ask how everything was going for her in Italy. What news did she have about her parents in Kiev and how was her little son.
“I’m in the shit. They killed my nephews,” she replied, leaving me cold. And this exchange of messages followed:
– What?
– Yes, they killed my two nephews.
– You can talk?
– I don’t want to, excuse me, I can’t even breathe.
– I imagine, I don’t know what to tell you… I have goosebumps. But you have to tell this, Elena. How old were they?
– 3 and 15 years old, it was in Bucha, north of Kiev.
– My goodness. When was she? Were they children of any of your brothers?
– No, children of my cousin. Sorry I can’t right now.
– I don’t know how, but count on me if I can help with anything. I was also shocked, but this must be told, this massacre must be denounced. When you get your strength back please give me details, that’s how we denounce it.
– Okay.
Then I sent him three emojis: the one with the two praying hands, the one with a broken heart and the one with a bent arm straining. And she sent me a minute of a video in which she was denouncing what happened on an Italian TV. “Well, let’s tell this to the world. Strength”, I encouraged her.
horror details
This morning I finally managed to talk to Elena, who gave me details of the horror. She told me that everything happened on March 4. Her cousin Natasha and her husband were escaping by car from the city of Bucha, north of Kiev, together with her three children: Andre, 15, Mihail, 13, and Nicola, 3.
“There were five in the car and the damn Russians started shooting with machine guns. Only one of the boys, Mihail, survived. My cousin and her husband are now in the hospital, injured. And the only boy alive meets people we don’t know… I passed out when my mom called me to tell me. I think they were the first guys they killed,” she says.
How is your son? Did he find out about the death of his cousins? “Yes. And it worries me because when I told him he had no reaction. She didn’t cry. She pretended nothing had happened, which is much worse.“, answer.
How are your parents, Olga and Mihail? “They are in a dacha outside Kiev, near Borispol, they cannot go out because they are both over seventy years old… My dad, in addition to having Covid, has cancer, he cannot move. I tried to call my mom for International Women’s Day, but so far I couldn’t. Surely in a few days they will remove all connections in Kiev, they will close all the entrances and exits and they will go hungry, as in the Second World War, ”she says.
“I don’t know what to tell you, psychologically I can’t believe that everything that is happening is true. It is a genocide, something never seen before!”, she cries.
“That is why I ask the whole of Europe for help to stop this war, because we have already paid too much, no one talks about the apartments we have left, our things, we are talking about too heavy victims, we are talking about children!” he shouts.
ELISABETTA PIQUE
SPECIAL ENVOY
THE NATION (ARGENTINA) – GDA
WARSAW
#killed #nephews #horrors #Ukraine #war