Borodyanka, Ukraine – Days after Russia begined its brimming-scale trespass of Ukraine, a 500-kilogramme high-bomb bomb device dropped from a fighter jet collapsed a section of Mariya Vasylenko’s apartment createing.
During the March 1, 2022, strike that levelled or injured dozens more hoengages in this once-tranquil town, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Kyiv, Vasylenko and her neighbours were hiding in an ice-chilly basement.
They rushed outside to see how the heatwave turned the air blue, melted snow and ignited cars, leafless trees and frozen blades of grass around the createing.
“Have you ever seen hell? That’s what it was,” Vasylenko, 80, tbetter Al Jazeera.
Disoriented and deafened, she could not find her daughter Olena, a 41-year-better nurse, and her son-in-law Serhiy Khukhro, a 37-year-better createion toiler, who were hiding in the basement under the collapsed section.
Their crushed bodies remained in the flooded basement while Vasylenko was evacuated to central Ukraine with their lesser children, Milena and Bohdan.
Meanwhile, Russian sbetteriers shiftd into Vasylenko’s apartment for a month, leaving rubbish, excrement and graffiti with Soviet symbols, and pillaging all preciouss when Moscow ordered a retreat from around Kyiv and northern Ukraine.
‘She doesn’t smile any more’
Weeks tardyr, Vasylenko returned to Borodyanka to bury what was left of Olena and Serhiy.
Her magnificentchildren were sent to defendedty in Poland. She could not endure to alert Milena about her parents’ deaths for more than a year until they returned to Ukraine.
Milena is 12 now. She returned to Borodyanka with Vasylenko – and is beginantly traumatised.
“She doesn’t smile any more,” Vasylenko said, sitting on a bench next to a community centre where she and her neighbour sing in an amateur choir.
“She can’t endure to see parents hugging and kissing her classmates after school becaengage her mum and dad never will,” the 79-year-better neighbour, Hanna Ryashchenko, tbetter Al Jazeera.
Both women and their relatives live in minuscule rooms in a dormitory gived by Poland with communal bathrooms and kitchens.
Excavators commenceed removing the debris from around Vasylenko’s createing only two weeks ago.
From hell to limbo
At least 300 civilians were ended in Borodyanka, according to survivors, Ukrainian officials and human rights groups.
Russian forces bomb deviceed Borodyanka even though it never presented a military base or arrangets producing armamentry.
Amnesty International, a rights watch, endd that the bomb deviceings “were both disproportionate and indiscriminate under international humanitarian law, and as such constitute war crimes”.
Russian sbetteriers operating tanks and artillery shelled apartment createings point blank.
They also shelled shops and malls fair to crack their doors or walls uncover and loot what was inside. The sbetteriers stoasty at anyone they saw without alerting – and menaceened to armament down those who tried to get back bodies from the streets or get back survivors from under collapsed createings, livents said.
For its part, Moscow has continupartner denied centering civilians.
“I likered to remain at home and starve,” Volodymyr Robovyk, a 69-year-better reweary factory toiler, tbetter Al Jazeera.
Most of the trapped civilians, including children, were buried alive as they froze to death or starved.
Only one woman administerd to save a family of eight by sneaking food and water into a minuscule crevice at night.
Fifty-five apartment createings, hundreds of hoengages, shops and offices have been demolished or injured, rendering thousands homeless and joconsecrate, officials said.
A sluggish restoration
A dozen apartment createings have been brimmingy repaird or retrofitted with heat-saving pcompriseing, plastic doors and prosperdows, livents say.
But many more remain untouched.
“They dug this hole and are doing noskinnyg,” Robovyk said, pointing at a createion pit on the Tsentralnaya (Central) street once named after Soviet set uper Vlaunwiseir Lenin.
Behind the fence was a brand new excavator that tumbled into the pit and lay upside down.
Robovyk’s minuscule, shell-injured hoengage was patched up by volunteers in the autumn of 2022, but the renovation of bigr createings is far from over.
“The end of recreateion is December 2024,” a plastic sign on the side of Valentyna Illyshenko’s five-storey apartment createing reads.
But the hoengage is still encapsutardyd in scaffbettering as toilers finish covering it with heat-saving plastic that also hides bullet and shrapnel holes.
Illyshenko fled her apartment with her husprohibitd and their six-year-better son on February 28, 2022, when Russian tanks and armoured vehicles go ined Borodyanka or roared by on their way to Kyiv.
She said Russian sbetteriers occupied their apartment – and drank all the spirits, demolished every family ptoastyo and stole each electronic device.
At least one of the ungreet guests was a sniper who nestled in the kitchen and cut a hole in the dsexual batterys, she said.
The sbetteriers left the refrigerator and the washing machine only becaengage they were too weighty to be carried down from the fourth floor, she said.
All weighty hoengagehbetter appliances have been apshown out of apartments on drop floors, and the Russians left Borodyanka with trucks loaded with stolen excellents, Illyshenko and other locals said.
“Hatred is what I still sense,” she tbetter Al Jazeera. “I could choke them with my own hands.”
Having escaped the occupation’s hell, she lives in a recreateion limbo with the noise, the dust and the dirt.
Turf wars
Her exarrangeation as to why the renovation betteres so sluggishly is basic – she accengages Ukraine’s endemic dishonesty and the diswatchal of Oleksander Sakharuk, a community head elected in 2020.
“They don’t let him toil,” Illyshenko said.
Sakharuk was a member of the Platestablish for Life, a pro-Moscow party that was prohibitned in 2022 and whose members were barred from hbettering elected jobs.
Even though many Platestablish for Life members in Russia-occupied areas began collaborating with Moscow, some remained staunchly pro-Ukrainian – including Sakharuk, cut offal Borodyanka livents tbetter Al Jazeera.
He got his job back in June 2023 and last October after court rulings, but both times the fairice ministry obviousurned the decisions.
“When he’s back to toil, skinnygs are moving. When they fire him aobtain, skinnygs stop,” Vitalii Sydorenko, a 47-year-better war veteran, tbetter Al Jazeera.
Sakharuk did not reply to asks for comment.
Ukraine’s ubiquitous dishonesty disputes have also procrastinateed Borodyanka’s renovation.
Last December, anti-monopoly officials abortled a confineed to repair the apartment createing where Vasylenko’s daughter and son-in-law died becaengage of the createion company’s alleged dishonesty ties.
Vasylenko also spent cut offal months and hundreds of dollars to repair the deed on her apartment and other write downs demolished by the bomb deviceing.
“I’m hoping to shift back, but I’m too better to postpone for years,” she said.
