The largest mass grave in Bucha - a town outside Kyiv that has become synonymous with the brutality of the Russian attack - is behind the church. The floor of the Church of Andrew the Apostle has been re-tiled and bullet holes in the walls plastered over and repainted - but the horror of what happened in March lies only a few yards away. “Now I understand what we have to lose.” "Before the war, it was another life" “In my mind, everything has changed: My values in life,” he said. “The whole world witnessed our solidarity,” says Huseinov, who grew up in Germany and says he would never again take the good things in life for granted. “People were really scared because many lost their children, members of their family, their brothers and sisters.”Ĭrosses made from construction wood are still nailed to the railings of the bridge to honor those lost and the effort to save civilians. “We got people out of (Irpin) because conditions were terrible - with bombing and shelling,” he said. “This bridge was the road from hell,” says Huseinov, 34, standing next to an overturned white van still lodged into a slab of smashed concrete. Clothing and shoes from those who fled can still be seen tangled in the debris. Reconstruction work has begun on the bridge, where mangled concrete and iron bars hang over the river. Huseinov was there for 16 days, organizing crossings where the elderly were carried along muddy pathways in wheelbarrows. Some of the most dramatic scenes from the early stages of the war were of the evacuation from Irpin underneath a destroyed highway bridge, where thousands escaped the relentless attacks. “I want to be an air force pilot.” "This bridge was the road from hell"īefore the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv and surrounding areas on April 2, suburbs and towns near the city’s airport were pounded by rockets, artillery fire and aerial bombardment in an effort to break the Ukrainian defenses.Įntire city blocks of apartments were blackened by the shelling in Irpin, just 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of the capital, along a route where police Lt. My stepfather is a soldier and I will be a soldier,” he says with a look of determination. “My father is a soldier, my uncles are soldiers and my grandfather was a soldier, too.
Polite and soft spoken, Danyk says his father and stepfather are both fighting in the Ukrainian army. “This was my bedroom,” he says, standing next to scorched mattress springs that protrude from the rubble of bricks and plaster. On the way, he stops at his old house, most of it smashed to the foundations. 1, Danyk and his grandmother have been joining volunteers several days a week clearing the debris from buildings damaged and destroyed in the Russian bombardment outside Chernihiv. I have to help my grandmother too because she has heart problems,” Danyk said.īefore schools reopen on Sept. “My mother needs surgery and that’s why I have to help her. A handwritten sign wrapped in clear plastic on the front gate reads: “Please buy milk to help my mother who is injured."
He sells milk from the family's cow that grazes in the nearby fields. She keeps the piece of shrapnel surgeons removed during one of her many operations.ĭanyk lives with his mother and grandmother in a house near Chernihiv, a town 140 kilometers (nearly 90 miles) north of Kyiv, where a piece of tarp covers the broken bedroom windows. Twenty-two weeks after she was wounded, she’s still waiting to have her foot amputated and to be fitted with a prosthetic.