Nina Pinchuk, left, checks the soup she made to feed hundreds of people fleeing Russian bombings at bomb shelters in Chernihiv, Ukraine. “When it got loud, we knelt down – but we kept cooking,” she says. ANTON SKYBA / Globe and mail
Deep below the classrooms of a vocational school, hundreds of Ukrainians clung to life in the darkness of an unlit boxing hall for weeks as Russian forces kept their city under siege, hitting it with rockets and bombs.
At one point, nearly 500 people took refuge in this place in Chernigov, a city without electricity and running water, during the winter months, when many homes had no heating.
They made candles from sunflower oil, pieces of cloth and cans of sardines. They sat on mattresses and played Monopoly and card games by the ropes in the boxing ring. They divided into teams, each with their own leader, and divided the work: Cleaning the basement. Maintenance of the outbuildings dug into the school territory. Emptying the ventricles intended for children and people with mobility problems. Draining water from a nearby river.
And they cooked.
Right in front of the school, Nina Pinchuk and Lidmila Solokhnenko were feeding hundreds of people from three pots leaning on concrete blocks over a wood fire. They boiled pasta and made soup from sliced potatoes, grated carrots and lentils, while rockets screamed from above and mortars crashed into the surrounding town.
“When it got loud, we crouched down – but we kept cooking,” said Ms. Pinchuk, a pizzeria cook. Once the attacks on a nearby military base were so close that they lay on the ground in fear. Another time, a rocket crashed into a nearby house, throwing shrapnel through the neighborhood.
Still, they supported the pots. “We are cooking for the children here,” said Ms. Solokhnenko, who worked as a cleaner at a military base before the war. “If we hadn’t cooked, I don’t know how it would have ended.”
Marina Momot shows a candle made of sunflower oil, pieces of cloth and a box of sardines at a bomb shelter in Chernihiv. ANTON SKYBA / The Globe and the Post Office
Chernihiv, a city of 250,000 people and one of Ukraine’s most historic centers, is 60km from Belarus. This was among the first places that Russian troops reached during their invasion of Ukraine. When the city refused to bow to an initial attack, Russian forces surrounded it, stifling the flow of goods and firing on those evacuating.
Russian forces withdrew this week, and the road to Chernihiv from Kyiv reopened on Monday.
Work began on patching up the city on Wednesday. The teams strung an electric wire back on the poles. Municipal water began to flow back from some taps. The cell phone service was blinking and coming out. Several residents raised their hands to applaud Ukrainian troops moving tanks and other heavy equipment through the city.
But many of the holes in Chernigov are so deep and so wide that they cannot be easily repaired. The city’s main highway is still closed as bridges are blown up. On Wednesday, teams also found a mine placed under a burned-out car.
Meanwhile, the basement of the vocational school remains full of people who cannot return to homes that no longer exist – and do not want to leave, the terrible Russian forces will regroup and return.
The outside world no longer feels safe.
Igor Biletsky, a teacher who fought as a reservist in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, has witnessed the horrors of the aftermath of the Russian invasion. “Anyone with a conscience would never do that,” said Mr Bilecki. ANTON SKYBA / Globe and e-mail
Igor Biletsky, a teacher who fought as a reservist in the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces, said the mother of one of his students had been killed while trying to leave the city. Both legs of the student are broken. He himself was 100 meters from an attack on people queuing for bread, which killed 14. Another attack on a line in front of a pharmacy killed 57. Globe and Mail saw a hospital that was badly damaged.
“Anyone with a conscience would never do that,” Mr Bilecki said.
Oksana Ohnenko, a local police officer, recited a list of Chernigov’s neighborhoods that had been severely damaged: Novoselovka, Kiselovka, Kienka, Ivanovka, Kolichevka, Yaginde, Lukashivka, Bilous, Sloboda, Voznesenske, Rivnepilya.
“It was hell here. “Really,” she said. What Russian forces have done, “normal people, a normal nation, will never do.” “They were just killing people,” she said. “Half of the city’s schools were simply destroyed. And our villages around the city – as if we never had these villages. “
Ms. Onenko heads a youth police unit. “Since the beginning of the war, I have seen in the eyes of every child: Why? For what? What did we do wrong? “
Alexander Vasilenko stands in a crater almost three meters deep, formed after a Russian air strike in his neighborhood on the outskirts of Chernigov, Ukraine. ANTON SKYBA / Globe and Mail
One of the first rockets to fall on the village of Trisvyatska destroyed the swing in Alexander Vasilenko’s backyard.
“The most strategic site in this neighborhood is a playground,” Mr Vasilenko said, his voice bitter with irony.
A bomb later dropped on his neighbor’s yard left a crater nearly three meters deep. He created such a powerful shock wave that he blew up the door of his neighbor’s refrigerator and smashed the door to Mr. Vasilenko’s house. Other bombs left the houses in ruins so completely that residents could save a little more than a few socks.
A local shopkeeper, Mr. Vasilenko, spent the siege delivering goods to others. When checkpoints blocked cars, he was delivering flour, butter and oil by bicycle. “When you get into a routine like this, there’s no time for tears,” he said.
As he spoke, his wife cleared the debris from the family garden. Potatoes and cucumbers will be planted soon. Green shoots of garlic have already appeared. “Life goes on. And we will continue as long as we live,” he said.
Yet for him and others, Russia’s retreat brought only muted joy. Even the stillness of peace was disturbing. During the siege, gunfire and other sounds of battle often subsided before shelling and air strikes began. “After the silence came the bombing,” he said. Now it remains “very scary to hear the silence.”
Alla Sukretnaya is sitting with her dog Mukhtar while her husband Leonid is resting in the basement of a bomb shelter in Chernigov. Russian mortar strikes have turned their two-story home to rubble. ANTON SKYBA / Globe and mail
For others, the destruction of privacy is so complete that it is difficult to conceive a future life. Alla Sukretnaya and her husband Leonid were on the first floor of their two-story house when he was hit by a mortar. They fled, taking only their dog Mukhtar with them. Everything else burned to the ground.
“I built this house with my own hands,” said Leonid, a retired trolleybus driver. Now he finds the idea of recovery almost incomprehensible. “With what? We have nothing,” he said.
Standing on the tile in the alley that Alla had laid herself, the couple looked at the remains of the house. The sight of what was once at home caused “pain. “Pain,” Alla said.
“I feel angry,” Leonid said, kicking a piece of metal. “I speak Russian and they came here to ‘set me free.'”
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