‘I was here with my family when the tanks destroyed our house’
It was one of the first places to bear the full ferocity of Russia’s invasion and where war crimes were committed. Nearly six months on, our Foreign Editor returns to find what life is like for those living in the Ukrainian city of Borodyanka
ALMOST every day, Natalia Kovalchuk and her five-year-old daughter Uliyana come to the park that sits adjacent to the central square in Borodyanka.
For both it’s an escape of sorts, a temporary respite and release from the claustrophobia of the small flat the 36-yearold mother is now forced to rent and where they live along with Natalia’s 12-year-old son.
The family’s real home, just like the scorched and bomb-blasted remains of the apartment blocks that sit across the road from the park, stopped being habitable the day shells, rockets and air strikes ripped swathes of this predominately working-class city apart shortly after the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
Barely yards from the monument in Borodyanka’s central square to the great 19th-century Ukrainian poet and patriot Taras Shevchenko, whose sculpted head now lies dangling from its plinth, pockmarked with holes from bullets fired by Russian soldiers, I asked Natalia about those terrifying days when war first came to the city. “I was here with my family and when the tanks entered, we hid in the basement and they destroyed our house – it hurts even now to talk about it,” Natalia recalls, the first wave of tears during our conversation welling in her eyes.
Both in Ukraine and across the world, much of the attention has now shifted to the new frontlines of this conflict in the east and south.
But even now nearly six months into the war, both in Borodyanka and in the neighbouring town of Bucha which were subjected to what are now recognised as war crimes, people are still coming to terms with what they lived through and what they lost.
Local authorities in Borodyanka estimate that more than 90 per cent of the city’s central area was destroyed.
Just why a city such as this, with no Ukrainian military camps or facilities of strategic importance in its immediate locale, should incur such wrath and savagery from its Russian invaders remains a point of speculation and debate.
Some maintain that the bludgeoning Borodyanka was subjected to can be attributed to the fact that its inhabitants and local territorial defence force put up such spirited resistance.
Citizens had prepared Molotov petrol bombs and guns had only been distributed days before the war, but still the people of Borodyanka managed to put up a dogged fight against the 200 Russian tanks, troops and aircraft that bore down on them, mainly from neighbouring Belarus, Russia’s ally 200 miles to the north.
But even such determined resistance still doesn’t explain the scale and ferocity of the military attack on Borodyanka, say Ukrainian officials, including the city’s current emergency manager Petro Kisilyov, whose staff are tasked with clearing the rubble and ruins, reinstalling street lighting, and cataloguing the level of destruction.
“Russian troops simply acted cruelly against the civilian population,” Kisilyov is on record as saying. It’s a view shared by many of Borodyanka’s citizens including Natalia Kovalchuk, who admits her view of Ukraine’s Russian neighbours will never be the same again.
“It’s changed totally, they are not human beings. I never thought this would
They are not human beings. I never thought this would be possible in the 21st century
be possible in the 21st century,” she told me as we talked in the park and Uliyana played on a nearby swing, innocently oblivious to the conversation we were having.
I asked her about the banners hanging from one of the burned-out apartment blocks sitting opposite, the slogan on one of which read: “We have lived here 40 years.”
It expressed the concerns of many former residents, Natalia explained, who are campaigning to have their homes rebuilt on the exact same location rather than elsewhere in the city as the local authorities have indicated.
Many of those families displaced from such blocks are now living in what has been dubbed “Iron City” near the centre of town, where railway carriages have been turned into dormitories.
At least eight of the 29 multi-storey buildings in Borodyanka are to be demolished after being damaged to varying degrees by the Russian assault. At least three more are to be partially destroyed.
Has such a policy by the local authorities divided this community which showed such solidarity in resisting the Russians who invaded their city, I asked Natalia?
“I don’t care about where they build, I just want them to rebuild these flats, but, yes, it’s true about 80 per cent of people want to stay in the same place,” she confirmed.
Earlier that same day I had visited the neighbourhood where Natalia’s own home now lies in ruins.
In this shattered landscape, multi-storey blocks sit as if dissected by a giant knife.
Looking upwards, it’s possible to see into what were once living rooms, bathrooms and kitchens. From one room, a door hangs from its hinges into the open air, while books still sit on shelves never to be read again. Hundreds of people died during the month-long Russian attack and occupation of the city and surrounding region. Many are still unaccounted for.
Wandering among the ruins the same day that I met Natalia I came across the gaunt figure of Oleksandr who emerged like some ghostly apparition from one of the entrance doorways to an apartment block before stopping to ask if I had any cigarettes I could give him.
Though still largely intact, the building he had come from had no windows and the walls were badly smoke-blackened because of the fires that had billowed out from the rooms ignited by the Russian bombardment.
The stench from heaps of garbage was overpowering. Reputedly, Oleksandr was the only remaining resident in the neighbourhood having nowhere else to go and unable to afford to rent elsewhere.
“My mother was killed in this building and I was wounded here in my hand,” explained 47-year-old Oleksandr, rolling up the jacket sleeve on his left arm to show the still tell-tale scars where shrapnel had punctured his wrist.
He told of how on one occasion during the occupation he thought he was going to die after being stopped in the street by Russian soldiers who asked if he had any tattoos.
Shortly after the Russian invasion, some Ukrainians got patriotic tattoos to show support for their country.
But in the intervening months such symbols have become a liability for many, some of whom have been tortured or killed after being discovered to have them.
“They didn’t check here, only my wrists and arms,” Oleksandr explained, pointing to high on his shoulder where, evidently, he had such a tattoo. In all, Oleksandr cut a sad figure, his hair matted, clothes filthy and skin pitted with dirt. His only belongings he carried in a small backpack.
How do you get by, I asked, to which he simply replied: “You don’t want to know,” a reference perhaps to petty crime which one local woman angrily accused him of as she passed by, declaring he had scavenged or pilfered from destroyed homes.
Whether such an accusation had any truth or not was impossible to tell but what was undeniable was the desperate situation this man, most likely already impoverished before the war, now found himself in.
In the ruins of Borodyanka, the fate of the living is sometimes as uncertain as those of the missing, of whom there are many.
Not far from where I spoke with Oleksandr, I came across one of many posters plastered on poles and smashed walls seeking information on unaccounted-for loved ones.
One such person was Ovadenko Olexandra, an 84-year-old local woman whose gentle face peered out from a photograph on a tattered poster outside what remained of her home.
She had been sheltering in the basement of the apartment block during a Russian bombardment on March 3 and after a lull in the explosions had
ventured up outside, never to be seen again, according to the message on the poster.
A relative had left a telephone number on the poster seeking information on what might have happened to her or where she might be if, as is unlikely, Ovadenko is still alive.
While finding those missing is one thing, identifying those found dead is something else again.
Some victims discovered in Borodyanka’s bombed ruins have often only been identified months later with the help of DNA testing so attempts to find the remains of those still unaccounted for goes on as their loved ones continue to search for them.