Illustrated by Darya Borodenko
“We drove on the roads where our 200s [an euphemism for “killed”] lie. No-one can bury them because this is a firing zone. Bodies are simply not allowed to be taken away.” This is Kateryna’s story (we changed the original name at the request of the heroine). A few days ago, she managed to escape from the Bucha District, which belongs to the Kyiv Region.
I met her at the border, near the Polish town of Dorohusk. Together with other volunteers, I distribute the bare essentials to Ukrainian refugees there. The woman was tired, but she found the strength to smile. Together we filled a package for her and her kids with sweets and basic hygiene items. To the rustle of diaper packs, she told me about the life of a small village a few kilometers from Bucha. She asked not to mention its name. The reason is that she’s afraid of the occupiers’ revenge.
“I am 37 years old, I taught Ukrainian language and literature at a school in one of the neighboring localities. For us, the war broke out early in the morning of February 24, when explosions were heard all day as the occupiers were bombing an airport in nearby Hostomel. While there was electricity and water, we could bear it, but on February 27-28 there was only gas (heating) left. Afterwards, we sat in the basement practically constantly.”
The Ukrainian checkpoint at the entrance to the village was demolished promptly. The enemy entered the village, deploying military vehicles just in the streets. The occupiers broke into some houses, checked people’s papers and wrote something down, took away and crushed some people’s phones.
“The Russians kicked the door down and settled in the house of acquaintances of mine who had left before. They even wore their clothes. In some cases they didn’t evict the owners and just settled in their homes, and now the hosts are forced to feed the invaders.”
The woman compares the occupiers to barbarians: they fire at the village in defiance of military logic, because there are no strategic facilities there. The school which was built in the early twentieth century and survived World War II is now damaged.
You have to leave the Bucha District at your own risk, because there are no “green corridors” from there. According to her, it is preferable to move in a column and put white sheets and signs reading “children” on your cars. Сars that move separately are shot more often. However, even as part of the column, the woman was not let through: a shelling had started. She had to go around through the fields and the woods amid active fighting.
Her parents have stayed in the village: “My mum wants to leave, my dad does not. And my mum is afraid to leave him alone.” You can’t go outside, and it’s forbidden to use electricity. The shelling by the occupiers never ceases, and the Ukrainian military does not respond to them with fire because they know that civilians will suffer due to it. Food is not delivered to the village, so the locals have been baking bread on their own since the first day. There is no gas now, so the woman’s parents built a “stove” out of bricks in the yard.
Almost all young people have left the village, and the older people have stayed because they could not leave the houses they had been building all their lives.
“People do not write about our villages. The head of the village has fled. The locals are simply abandoned. The occupiers are looting, everything has been marauded, it is impossible to bring humanitarian aid.” The woman’s voice, which sounded business-like before, started to tremble at this moment.
Now Kateryna and the children are heading for Italy, where they will be hosted by acquaintances. Finally, no longer able to hold back her tears, she added desperately: “
When they claim that they’ve come to save us, I would like to ask: ‘From what?’ We had a wonderful life. We had some plans. Now we have no plans, and we don’t know when we can return home.”
