"I want people to know what they are commiting because for some reason they believe they are liberating us from something, but in fact, they are liberating us from our lives, and that's it."
From the testimony of the resident of Vovchansk. May 2024.
On June 16, 2024, Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov made a statement about the establishment of so-called "sanitary zone" in the Kharkiv region. Two weeks before this statement, the United Assault Brigade of the National Police of Ukraine "Lyut" published a video on their Facebook page showing what the Russian authorities believe a "sanitary zone" in Ukraine should look like, namely the total destruction of the city of Vovchansk, which is located five kilometers from the Russian border.
– Please tell me, is there anything else you would like to add?
– For the war to end. Just for the war to end. So that this grief never happens again. Because those brutes, they just... We lost our home. Everything we worked for... As they say, every person has something planned in life. And now we are starting over, unfortunately, at the age when people are just supposed to sit and drink tea in the evenings. I really want the war just to end. And I really want those who behaved like brutes towards people to be really punished because you can't ignore human honor and dignity like that. It’s very hard. It hurts so much. And it hurts so much for these children. It hurts me so much for them. They are so nice. I just want them to be happy. That's all. Nothing more.
With these words we ended the interview with the teacher from Vovchansk. In May 2024, as the result of the repeated attack on the Kharkiv region, her house and the city was destroyed by Russian troops. And earlier in 2022, her mother was killed during the occupation. When we met again to finish our work with the material at the end of July this year, the city of Vovchansk was almost totally destroyed.
The destruction of peaceful and settled life. Injuries, survival, death of family and friends - the inherent injustice and violence of war. These testimonies not only confirm the war crimes committed by Russia but also reveal the narrator, her bravery and pursuit of justice, which encourage to share her experience. From the first days of the occupation till today.
The beginning
I used to work at the Vovchansk-Khutir school in Vovchansk district, Kharkiv region. Now I work in the Poltava region, where I moved because of the war.
At the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion, I was at home because on 24 January I slipped on the stairs at school, fell and broke my hip. It was a very severe fracture. I had surgery and it was exactly one month after the procedure. My husband was working in Kharkiv, and my older son was also there, so I was completely alone. I was on crutches, I couldn't walk for three months, I was at home in Vovchansk. My mother, who lived separately from me, walked very poorly, with a walker only, and she was also alone at home at that time. It was very hard for us, because imagine two disabled persons, let's say it streight. And at 6:15 am [24 February 2022], Russia raised their flag in Vovchansk.
At 5:15 am, we all woke up to terrible explosions. I opened the front door, all the neighbors in the house were standing outside. There were horrors along the border. And as my neighbor said, the ‘Russian world’ has come [a quasi-ideological basis for aggressive imperialist policy] and it will not reckon with anything. And he was right.
The first victims – they shot people from a tank. I know [the place] where this happened. Every Vovchansk resident knows the place, where the monument with the airplane taking off was located. There was also a shop there, and men were standing there drinking coffee, and they turned around and saw the approaching tanks. At the same time in the morning, people were driving back from work in a car from the direction of Bilyi Kolodiaz. [The Russian military] gave them a warning shot, but people were returning from work, they didn't know that there was a war, that Russia was here... And they wanted to move aside from those tanks. And because they didn't stop, [the Russian military] shot directly into the car, and a man and two women died. These were the first victims, and then it went further. What they’ve committed was just about to happen.
Occupation
They occupied everything that was possible. All organizations were filled with their soldiers. And it so happened that I was forced to live under occupation. It was a nightmare, I could see a part of the intersection from my window: the tanks, armored personnel carriers were approaching all day long and during the night too, the planes were flying. They stopped by near my flat.
Their commanders told me not to talk to the soldiers or I could have gotten a bullet in my forehead. And that was it. Well, let's just say it was not difficult for them to kill us. They don't consider us as human beings at all. One woman saw a Russian soldier coming up and giving candy to children on the playground. She approached him and asked, ‘I'm sorry, are you not going to shoot us?’ And he replies: ‘If there is no order, we will not. If there is an order, we will’.
They were undressing people on the streets, I remember it very well. In early March they were looking for Azov soldiers [Ukrainian soldiers of the Azov regiment], for those who had served. They were stripping men on the streets down to their underwear. They were looking for tattoos, looking for bulletproof vest marks. It was all terrifying, it was horrible.
The Russian flag was raised on the square where the flag of Ukraine used to be. They hung their [flag] there. Then the [local] men took it down at night. They were taken captive, of course. They [the Russian military] made a concentration camp in the Aggregate Factory and started taking men there. They tortured them, electrocuted them, beat them... Many people did not return from there. And many people got there on the tip of collaborators.
In early April, they brought a lot of people from the ‘DPR’ and ‘LPR’ [separatist quasi-state entities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions proclaimed in 2014 by paramilitary groups under the control and support of Russia]. There were many people who were settled in the building of the financial department. One of them was shopping at the market, buying homemade sausage from some old lady. He bought it, and she said, ‘Oh, how nice of you to come to us, it's just wonderful!’ And he says to her in Ukrainian, ‘Do you understand what you're saying? We are now cannon fodder, our children are cannon fodder. Do you think that if you are conquered, you will be better? You had a life here, and now it's gone. He said, ‘I'm a doctor, my friend is a teacher. But if we hadn't left, our children would have been killed.’ My neighbor heard this herself, she was standing there because she wanted to buy something from this old lady.
We had no bread in the city for 20 days. Then the supply was renewed. They [the Russian army] were shooting at the trucks with bread. Finally, the bread was delivered and there was a line of 70 people behind it. Our teacher walked by, and there were three of them [Russian soldiers] standing there. One of them said, ‘If only we could start a rifle burst-fire now, it would be lovely, but there was no order’.
Evacuation
The self-evacuation of the civilians from Vovchansk began almost immediately, after the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022. The unwillingness to live under occupation and the sense of upcoming terror forced people to attempt to leave the city and surrounding villages using all possible ways, including the ones through the territory of Russia. Then, through the EU countries, the residents of the Kharkiv region returned to the unoccupied territories of Ukraine or stayed abroad. When leaving through the Russian border, the phones, laptops and other personal belongings were subjected to a detailed inspection conducted by the Russian military and special services [personnel]. If ‘unfriendly to the Russian Federation’ messages were found in messengers, tattoos with [Ukrainian] national symbols, or a bad outcome of an interview with the FSB, Ukrainian citizens were not allowed to leave the occupied territories. They were taken for interrogation or abducted to prisons in the Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk regions of Russia. For this reason, the residents of Vovchansk were choosing a no less risky way to leave the city, specifically through Russian security checkpoints and the gray zone to the territory controlled by Ukraine.
I remained under occupation until the fourth of May [2022]. My mother moved to my place. Then we found out that an [evacuation] column was being formed to leave towards Kharkiv. My neighbor came running and said, ‘Let's leave while there are still some places’. And we agreed immediately, because there was no other way out.
We decided to leave. Because my mother was very ill. She has coxarthrosis, diabetes, hypertension. And I saw that her foot was turning blue. My neighbor, a surgical nurse, said that it was most likely the beginning of gangrene. And I just had no idea how to deal with it [I think]there was nothing we could do... Because the hospital was already providing treatment only to Ruscists [Russian soldiers]. I just imagined that she would either die of gangrene... or... My younger son is a doctor, he was just finishing his last year of internship at that time. And I decided that we would save her if we leave the city.
On the fourth day, in the morning, a column was forming so we arrived, our neighbor took us there. We got into the car and started driving through Starytsia [village]. The exit was through Staryi Saltiv [village], because the dams had already been destroyed there. [The route was leading] through Starytsia, through Rubizhne, Verkhniy Saltiv, we had to leave from the other side of Saltiv and move along the ring roads, near Chuhuiv, and get to Kharkiv. The driver was a very nice man, ‘I don't understand anything,’ he said, it's the first time we've ever been on this road.’ I said, ‘How is it your first time? Don't you have a route to take people out?' - ‘We used to take people out, but now there is no way to get there, and they said this is the most normal exit.’
We were driving through the forest. And the driver said that we were driving through Russia at that time. I could never even think that we were so... I didn't know that we were so close... This is border. I knew that Vovchansk was 4 kilometers away, and that was it, there was Russia. So we took a roundabout way, through the woods, we arrived near the village of Verkhniy Saltiv...
But I started to get worried when everyone, who was traveling, told me that they were stopped at every checkpoint [by the Russian military], for the documents check, for the luggage check, but we were not stopped anywhere. This was somehow confusing to me. They let us through very quickly. Very quickly.
Shooting of an evacuation column
We were driving and the driver said ‘The last checkpoint is coming, get your passports ready.’ My mum was sitting in the back, and she handed me the bag. And I knew the time, it was 8:30 am, because we got to this place so quickly, even though everyone said there were stops everywhere. And I saw a huge tank coming out of the woods and six machine gunners coming out. They just got on the first five cars. My mum passed me a bag, and I didn't understand anything at the time. The bullets were just whistling like wasps everywhere. I had a dog in my arms, my cocker spaniel. I slid down the seat, and my neighbor shouted from behind me, ‘Your mum's been killed!’
I screamed, ‘- Mum! Mum!’ - she didn’t answer. Then the door got stuck, so I couldn't get out of the car. My neighbor crawled to our car... Because he was transferred from us, he traveled in the front car. He opened the door, the one and then the other one... He pulled his wife out. He helped me out and pulled his wife out as well.
She was screaming - the bullets have torn her knee. She had severe bleeding, broken blood vessels. We had to bandage her up because she was bleeding out. She said, ‘That's it, mum's dead... Your mum's gone...’ And I couldn't even look up because the bullets were flying. I was lying on the ground, and then I saw the door opening... And my mum's hand fell out. And a woman, she was with her three children, this woman... She pulled her out of the car like that [demonstrates]. And I saw a picture: her neck was torn, torn by a bullet, she had a huge bleeding, her head... But she was still saying something, I couldn't understand what she was saying…
I was crying a lot because... The first thing I felt was guilt that I was taking her to save her, but I brought her to be killed. Somehow, I didn't even think about what would happen to me. I saw that they were just shooting us. And I shouted that my mother was wounded. They told me to crawl away, the tank was coming. I was told that they would take her away... Who? How? But I understood that it was impossible, I could see that she was dying.
The bullets whistled so intensely that my hair melted. The bullet that killed my mother... It passed by my eye when I turned my head... It broke a bone and blood splashed on the face, all black, and it was that bullet that killed my mother.
We crawled, the tank hit the car in front of us. The car caught a fire from the shot and exploded. The upper part was completely twisted, wrapped in metal. There was a family inside: a woman, a 13-year-old girl, and a small baby, a six-month-old girl. The woman... she had a very severe wound in the abdomen, everything was bleeding out of her. The baby was wounded by fragments, not very badly, maybe tangentially. But the baby... there was terrible screaming, explosions, imagine, the baby screaming terribly... She was crying a lot... And my dog tried to calm her down: he came up, started licking her, lying on her, and she stopped crying. And the older girl was killed.
The woman was in such a shock that when they told her to crawl, she got up and walked. She was just... Well, she was in such a stupor. She kept saying that everything was gone, the child was gone. She was passing out. So she laid down, and I saw she was losing consciousness. I started pulling her legs. I heard someone shouting at her, ‘Don't fall asleep!’ But she passed out because her intestines were all torn.
My neighbor was badly injured, and a woman whose child was burnt [too]. And as for me... I didn't even realize that my leg was also wounded, a shard had cut out the flesh on my calf. And my face was wounded. It was probably just stress, you know, a stressful situation.
There was also a question: one moment we were being shot there, and another one there was silence. Then they started shelling again, literally 20 meters away. And everyone was fleeing, but I couldn't run after the surgery. They left me alone, under a tree, saying, ‘We will come back for you’. The one who took us out said, ‘Remember my name, I will definitely come back for you. [I though] God, I'm going to be killed in Vovchansk for those people... that were shot…’. And then he gave interviews in Vovchansk. He gave interviews to everyone... Russian media arrived there, and he gave interviews that we were shot by Ukrainian soldiers. Later I found out that his wife had been in Russia for a long time, and he had already been collaborating with the Russians. And he sold us to the Russians.
I asked him, ‘Is my mum burning?’ He said calmly, ‘Yes, she's burning’. Because the car caught fire, the [shock] wave threw it away, but the car could avoid her. Its bumper was on fire, and it set my mother on fire. As the autopsy later proved, she was already dead at that moment - there was no smoke in her lungs. Not only was she shot, but she was also burnt: her right side was completely burnt…
Crossfire
It was all planned by them [the Russian military]. I understood why we were not stopped anywhere, everyone knew who we were and where we were going.
At first, they shot us with machine guns. And you know what - this was a crossfire. Because you can see in the photo, there was a rifle fire-burst on the windscreen, it killed our driver, it killed my mother.
But my neighbor was wounded by the shots that came from the other side, from the right side from the hill. I was sitting in the front, and all the glass from the side windows of the back and front doors was smashed by shots, and I was all cut up with glass.
I slid down the seat and heard all this [shots from the side], the glass flying... And when we got out of this mess, my neighbor, who served in the army, said that it was a crossfire, it was not just a fire from the front. The Russians were also on the hill, they were there, [right] where the shooting came from. And it turns out that my neighbor was wounded from the side of the hill, not by the bullets that hit the windscreen, that's what happened. They were also shooting from the front and the right. And on the left side were their Grads [the name of a multiple rocket launcher system], I know that for sure.
It was on the fourth of May, and from the eighth to the ninth there were very heavy hostilities. And they say that the tank that attacked us was hit on the seventh [of May 2022]. I was told by those villagers who saved me that the tank that shot our people had already burned down.
Also, this tank... My neighbor, when he already moved abroad, we contacted him. He told me that they were sitting in the blackthorns, all those who escaped, 12 of them, with their children. And the tank was standing with its turret pointing over the thorns, but the tanker probably decided that they were further away, but they were almost under it, and the tank turned around and left.
And when I watched a video about the shooting of the [evacuation] column in Kupyansk, when people were shot, the tank was catching up to the people in the same way to shoot them. It was just a one-to-one scenario.
It was exactly the same. When I watched, I had the impression that it was, you know, like a rehearsed scenario. And there were a lot of videos of women telling what happened, where the Russians went, how they were shot, how they were caught, how they were hiding, how they were falling... I was very surprised at how similar it was... And we also had ‘Children’ inscription written on our cars. But this did not stop anyone... And that's exactly how the minivans were shot up there: the children and pregnant women.
The shooting of the [evacuation] column near Kupyansk took place on 25 September 2022 on the Kurylivka-Pishchane road near Kupyansk, Kharkiv region. Twenty-six people were killed, including 13 children and a pregnant woman. The last two victims were identified later. ‘On October 17, prosecutors of the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office, together with investigators from the SSU [Security Service of Ukraine], based on witness statements following the possible escape route of the wounded, found the 26th victim of Russia's brutal terror - a 19-year-old man. According to preliminary reports, after the [evacuation] column was shot at, he walked about 1.5 km wounded and died in the field. During an additional inspection, law enforcement officers found another victim of Russia's brutal terror - a 75-year-old woman. According to a preliminary report, after the column was shot at, she crawled about 200 meters in the direction of Kupyansk-Vuzlovyi and died in the field. The body was sent for forensic examination. In addition, law enforcement officers found a possible hiding spot from which the Russian military fired at the column and documents of Russian soldiers', - the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor's Office claimed in a statement. During the shooting of the column near Kupyansk, Kharkiv region, 7 people managed to escape.
Survival
I was left alone, and when the Grads started hitting again, I saw that snipers were sitting upstairs in a house behind me. If I started to leave, they would have killed me. So I started crawling into a garbage ditch, you know, at the end of the garden. And I rolled down there, crawled, then there was glass, and I realised that I would cut myself all over. I rolled over into the grass and I was really thirsty, I was exhausted, I didn't have the strength to crawl anymore, so I decided to walk.
And then I heard the tanks coming. And there were two roads there, one unpaved and the other one asphalt. They were moving along the asphalt road because there was a very loud noise. I said, ’God, please take me, but quickly, so that I don't suffer’. And I fell down and covered my head with my hands. And my dog climbed on top of me completely and his paws were on my back, I felt it. He somehow spread out on me. And they [the Russian military] passed over my head, but they probably thought I was dead and the dog was lying on his owner, and they didn't touch me. They were going to finish killing those people who had escaped.
And the dog didn't get off me until we stopped hearing this loud noise. Then he got down, started licking me, and I crawled on all fours into the thorns, the thorns were so thick, and I climbed in, and he remained beside me, we fell down with him... And I heard a kind of a rumble. And I looked up... and I saw the Russian soldier face to face.
I saw them... They were giving interviews [to Russian media], saying that it was our people who shot us... NO! I saw who shot us. I saw all those guys on the APC, I saw their chevrons. I saw that it was the three-color flag. When they entered Vovchansk, they had chevrons... At first, they didn't hide the chevrons. And then they started hiding the chevrons under white tape. They wrote ‘The polite troops’ [The phrase "polite people" was minted in 2014 in Russian media during the first months of the Crimea occupation. As Russia officially denied the fact of their military forces participation in the occupation of the peninsula, in the media reports persons who were claimed to be the local witnesses of the occupation events described occupational troops as "polite people in uniform"] there. That's why I know exactly who shot us. And I met him eye to eye. He just turned away [from me].
We laid there, and took a breath. Then I crawled to the edgeof all these cottages, the entire garden on all fours. Because I was terrified to get up, because the Grads were hitting all the time. Then I reached the village, the cottage settlement. I was walking and yelling: ‘People, help me, give me water!’. There was no one anywhere. It was so scary.
I reached a transformer, there was a curb, I sat on it, and my phone started to catch the connection. I couldn't make a call, but I could at least send a message. So I texted my son, the youngest one, saying that the grandmother had been killed, I don't know where, I was with Snoopy, you know, with the dog...
Now, after everything that happened, the dog has gone gray. He was all red. And now his head is almost white, he's gray. And he follows me like a tail, he follows me all the time, he follows me, he follows me, he never leaves my side.
I found a house without a fence. All the others had big fences and locks, but there was nothing there. I saw through the window that there was water. I broke the window, climbed inside, took the dog, drank some water with him, and laid down. Then I started looking for something to eat, I found some groat, and we hid there for three days. We ate soaked groat, drank water with sugar, and were [trying to] survive.
I spent most of the time on the floor, because the shelling was very heavy. I realized that if I lay down on a bed... it was better to stay down. I noticed when I let the dog out to go to the toilet and had to drag him through the window that I tore my shoulder as I was crawling. My stomach and knees were in pain. All this kept rotting for the next two months, because I tore my knees and elbows, and my abdomen muscles burst.
On the sixth or seventh [May 2022], the mobile connection was restored, and they started shooting at me with cluster shells. They [shells] just landed around the house, but did not hit it. From 1am to 5am, they kept shelling me, and that was it - the shrapnel was flying around, the soil was flying... But, thank God, they didn't hit me. I could not understand, I sat there and said [to myself], ‘What have I done to you, why are you persecuting me?’ Then I noticed that the phone was switched on, and I was upset because it had very little charge, and I was worried that I would not be found. So I switched the phone off, and they stopped hitting me. They must have decided that the target was gone.
Rescue
I went out, the sun was rising, I came out and I was crying out, ‘Oh, God,’ I said, ’I can't take it anymore, I don't have the strength, I really can't. Moreover, when we ran out of groat, we found a little bit of oatmeal, a little bit of buckwheat, a little bit of semolina, and I used to mixit all in cold water, it swelled and we ate it.
Something I noticed during the war was that as soon as I started cleaning and sweeping, something good would happen: someone would bring food, or some good news would come... And can you imagine, I took a broom and started sweeping that house, cleaning everything in it. I cleaned everything, sat down and said, ‘That's it.’ And then a knock on the door followed and there were women's voices, ‘[name of witness], are you here?’ It turned out that my son, with the help of the SSU [Security Service of Ukraine], and the military, and the volunteers, had found an old woman, who lived in this village, she told her friends [about me], and they found me.
I just came in to this old lady, she gave me something to eat. I ate and we wanted to get up and go to another room, and then a shell hit the place where we were standing. The windows in the house were smashed, the trees were cut down, but it was right next to where we were.
We moved to another house where the owners allowed everyone to shelter. Because the walls were very strong, the basement was so solid, with large concrete floors, it was very well protected. We all hid there.
On the ninth of May [2022], there were terrible battles, from the eighth to the ninth the ground was roaring. Then on the 10 [May] our guys, the military, came and offered us to leave.
Consequences
I knew that my mother was taken by the military prosecutor's office to Chuhuiv. And that my eldest son was supposed to go for her identification on 11 May. Then he called, literally begging me to tell him what she was wearing [at that time]. At first, I didn't even know why. Then a year later after my mother's death, he said that he didn't want to upset me, but he could only recognise his grandmother by her clothes. Because she was so severely mutilated that she was burnt all over, the right side [of her body] was completely burnt.
When I arrived here, in the Poltava region, it turned out that I hadn't even seen that the flesh on my calf had been torn out. I hadn't seen it for so many days - from the fourth to the tenth [of May 2022] I got dressed and put on my shoes, and then I didn't take my shoes off, I didn't see anything. When we arrived in Kharkiv, I got into the shower for the first time, and I couldn't understand why I had such a pain in my leg. And then I saw that the blood and torn flesh, everything was scabbed over[there]. And it turned out to be an old wound, which caused such severe pain.
My arms hurt a lot, and to this day they do not lift because the muscles are torn. It also turned out that my abdominal muscles were torn, and my intestine got there, and it was squeezed because I was crawling long distances at the time. Later, in October 2022, I had a surgery, and then the intestine burst due to pressure, there was a crack, and I had peritonitis. On 13 May last year [2023], I was treated in Poltava, I underwent two surgeries at once, had my intestines reconstructed and my hernia sewn up. I had 18 centimeters of muscle split, and my skin was just splitting.
All the documents, all the birth certificates, all the diplomas that exist, all the information about graduation, children, everything, because I took it with me - were lost.
The phone broke down and that was it, unfortunately, nothing was left. Well, you know, there are such phone damages that it is impossible to restore, only a photo of my mother remains and that's it.
All my documents were burnt. So far, I have only restored my birth certificate, marriage certificate, and the diploma I have. But all my documents on the house ownership were burnt in the car. And the house had already been burnt. On that Sunday [May 2024], a shell hit, and my house in Vovchansk was completely burned down. I just got a call and from my neighbor across the street, who has stayed there, he couldn't come out of the cellar for a whole day, [because] the shelling was so terrible. And then, when he came out, he saw that there was not a single house left.
At first, there was the first hit [a shell] to the apartment next to us, and then our apartment caught fire.
Our soldiers were there [in May 2024]. They moved into the apartments which remained intact after the first bombing. There was even my son's friend who texted him, ‘We are in Vovchansk’. And my son told him where our cellar was. And they took food from there. I was very happy that [the cellar supplies] came in handy. But then a drone tracked them down, and then a guided bomb hit, and they all died there [cries]. All the children [the witness lovingly refers to the Ukrainian soldiers], they all died in that last apartment.
My mum's neighbor, they were pretty close, she called me and told me that that was it: my mum's house was gone too. There was nothing left at all. So we decided to start our life again, to wait for something to come along, you know, I can't take it anymore. I need to have my own nest, and I need my children to have a place to go home to..... I understand that I have nothing left, I need something to stick to in my life, I'm not at the age to... Everyone receives some attention on the labor market for a certain period of time. I realized that as long as I have a job, my job, which I love, and I have been working for so many years... So I decided that I needed to take out a loan and rent a house, and when things calm down a bit, then I will start to apply for something, look for something, but I have to keep working.
Students
I was on sick leave for a month when the war started. So I'm very sorry that there was no connection, I couldn't get in touch with them, I couldn't communicate with these children in any way. I used to write them assignments, and my colleagues used to take them to school, and they used to bring me back their notebooks.
I used to write them [the students] complete letters in their notebooks, telling them to hold on, but remember that your duty is to study, you must not become stupid because of the war, you should develop. And I wrote them such notes in their notebooks, where I checked their homework. Unfortunately, that was the way I communicated with them, and then, when I left, they knew what happened to me. And when they found out that I was alive, they started to get in touch with me from time to time, those who had not left and remained under occupation [until 11 September 2022].
This year, they congratulated me on the end of the school year, and I congratulated them because they had already finished 9th grade. I'm very grateful to them, they called me and came out on a video call. I'm just so grateful to them that they called me, that they communicate with me.
The kids... When I saw them, I cried a lot. These are heroic children, because they have been in such conditions for two years. I cannot tell you how hard it is for them, but they are studying, they are actually studying. Then I was shocked to see how they supported each other, they even, as they say, edified each other. Because there was one girl who was not evacuated by her parents, she remained under shelling in Vovchansk. And they started calling and asking to turn on the video call so that they could tell her mum via video: ‘Please take her out’. And finally they left for Kharkiv.
The fate of other people from the shot [evacuation] column
There were 35 cars in our column. The first five were shot. The last one, i.e. the fifth, was quite far away from us. It attempted to turn around, but they fired a rifle fire-burst at it. Well, as I understand they fired at them, but they survived somehow. And maybe they were even picked up by those cars that turned around, because when we crawled to that car, there were no corpses there. There was nobody there. There were child seats, toys, but there was no one left dead there. Thirty cars returned to Vovchansk. Again, look here’s a question: they were not stopped anywhere again, they all went back.
After the shelling, those who were crawling with me under fire reached the country houses. The organizer of the [evacuation] convoy said that he had seen people there and that they would take us out. They asked a local [guy] to take us out. He took out the seats completely, he had sort of a minivan, so that all these 11 people could fit. They were just lying on the floor... He evacuated them to take them to the hospital in Vovchansk. The van was covered in blood, he told me himself at the time. And when he approached the Russian checkpoint, he said that he was bringing the injured from the shelling, and they let him through at every spot. Before leaving, he said, ‘I can't, I hate them [the Russian military]. I won't be able to control myself,’ he said. So his neighbor went with him and said, ‘I'm going to pull you to shut you up. We have to get back’. And he managed to take them out.
My neighbor, the 12th, could not get into the car because there were so many people, so he stayed behind. The next day, local women transported him by another car to Vovchansk. He was also wounded, but not badly, he got a tangential wound but that was it. He kept repeating, ‘Please find my neighbor, she's somewhere around with her dog’. But it turned out that I managed to leave, I crawled, let's say, I found a place where I could have waited, because if I had stayed there, they would have shot me, it was clear as day. I would have simply not survived.
And at night, these men who stayed at the country houses were still walking around, searching for me. I was shocked that they weren't afraid, you can imagine how fearless these people are. And then, when they found me, one of them said, ‘I thought there must have been a sort of a sporty woman, you know’... And here I am - one and a half meters [tall] with a dog. He looked at me like that [demonstrates] and said, ‘I don't believe she managed to get out, I don't believe it, how is it possible?’ I said, ‘I don't believe it myself. Some miracle must have helped, that's all.
I cannot say exactly how many people died. I know that all the drivers were definitely killed. Then that 13-years-old girl died, and I don't know the rest. There were 12 people who escaped, crawled out of the shelling, I was the 13th one.
My neighbor and a woman wounded in her abdomen were sent to Belgorod for treatment by the Russian military. They saved them from being ‘shot by Ukrainians’ [ironically].
A neighbor with a torn knee, she also started to lose consciousness, and another woman, they were taken to a hospital in Vovchansk. But our surgeons had no idea how to deal with them, because they were both wounded very badly. And then Russian military doctors arrived and told them to transport them to the Belgorod military hospital for treatment. And they were transported by the Russians. My neighbor went with his wife. Later, we were on the phone with him. He said that he was waiting for her to be allowed to get up, at least on crutches.
Many people I knew went to Europe through Russia, because there was no other way to go in that direction [towards the territory controlled by Ukraine]. They went to Russia and somehow got out. Our neighbors went to the Baltic [region]. From the Baltic [region], they headed [further] to the west. And there they already received the status of immigrants. And my neighbor had two more surgeries there. Because we keep in touch with him from time to time. Now she is walking normally. He works at a factory and once sent me a photo of him talking to the prime minister of the country where they now live.
The other wounded woman, as far as I know, was in a very serious condition. Her husband took her there [to Belgorod] for treatment. Then the Russians allowed him to identify the body of the girl who was burned to death. My son was at the identification of my mother, his grandmother, and at the same time the father of this child arrived and identified this girl only by the necklace with her name on it, but otherwise it was just bones. Her body was completely burnt.
At first, the media wrote that she was stolen by Russian soldiers. But I knew for sure that she was burned to death. And then, when my son was on his way to the identification, I told him, ‘please tell them that this girl was burned because the car burned down, no one abducted her. My son had just arrived, and the prosecutor's office had already found out that she was burnt to death, that child.’
And then imagine... The man’s wife is in Russia. There is an occupation here [in Ukraine]. The remains of the dead girl were buried in Chuhuiv. He goes back to Vovchansk - he goes back to Belgorod, to his wife, stays with her. He was released and allowed back to Belgorod: the Russians made such a nice gesture, as if they were saving her, but they were saving her from themselves.
She had severe wounds, he stayed with her and the little child stayed with his sister. And then, on 11 September, Russians were kicked out [on 11 September 2022, the Ukrainian military de-occupied the Kharkiv region], and he stayed in Belgorod, and the child stayed with his sister. And he cannot get back. And this is the terrible story of this family, it's just horrible.
And, you know, the scariest thing was when we were about to get into the car before the evacuation, and my mother said, ‘Look at this beautiful family. They are very beautiful people. That woman is very pretty, the girls. The little girl was dressed in all pink. And this man, he was hugging all three of them like this [demonstrates], holding them like this, and kissing them. And we were just crying, we couldn't watch it.
The repeated attack
After the Ukrainian military de-occupied the Kharkiv region on 11 September 2022, Russia began regular shelling with all kinds of weapons: tanks and artillery, and guided aerial bombs. Civilians were killed and thousands of people were forced to leave their homes.
Just recently, my friend was killed in the shelling. A shell hit and killed her in Vovchansk. She didn't leave, didn't evacuate, but she wanted to evacuate, and when she was about to leave, a shell hit and killed her.
And a man, [name withheld], who wanted to leave, but a shell was dropped from the drone, he was thrown out of the car by a shock wave, has also died recently. There were two versions of the story: [the first one was] that he was taken as a wounded man to the Orel region by the Russian military, and the second one was that he was simply eaten by dogs. He died and no one could find him. Now his wife is searching for her husband, and we are all searching too, we just want to know the truth. Whether he died, unfortunately, such a terrible death, or whether he was actually abducted.
There was an acquaintance of mine who also died right in the yard from shell fragments, it killed him. He was also a very nice person, he worked as a shop assistant, we used to communicate. This happened back when no one was aware that Vovchansk was being bombed repeatedly for two years. Because the media did not report it. Everyone knew that on 11 September they [Armed Forces of Ukraine] liberated the city, but until 10 May 2024, no one was aware that for two years there were shells flying there, with people dying every single day, with everything around being destroyed. There was silence until the second [Russian] attack began.
