Notes from underground bring hostage ordeal to light
Hundreds of Ukrainian villagers held captive by Russians in tiny cellar drew record of their experience on walls
For nearly a month, the calendar sketched in black crayon on the back of a door was the only way the dozens of people trapped in the damp, squalid room could keep track of their time as prisoners of the Russian invaders.
Without phones or any access to the outside world, they knew that the only way to stay sane in such atrocious conditions was to count each day as it passed. So, they did.
Beneath the words “March 2022”, they marked the letters representing the days of the week. The numbers started from March 4.
Rounded up like cattle and imprisoned in the basement of the village school, the 37 people crammed into this room were among nearly 400 residents of Yahidne who were forced to live, breathe, and go to the toilet for weeks on end down here.
Inside, the air was stagnant, there was no light, and the temperature was often freezing. Twelve people died.
Much of the region around Kyiv is now a crime scene as the authorities investigate evidence of Russian atrocities, including mass killings of civilians and rape.
But it is walls of the rooms beneath the Yahidnianska secondary school that tell the haunting story of the terror the residents of Yahidne, a small village near Chenihiv, had to endure.
It started with the calendar. But soon, the 380 hostages kept in four small rooms decided to record who had perished while underground owing to poor ventilation and no access to medication. Their names were written to the right of the calendar. On the left were the names of those that had remained in their homes and had been killed.
But there were also signs of life – playful paintings by the 60 children who were also held hostage.
A large cat with long whiskers and pointy ears had been drawn on one wall, while opposite the children had sketched out what had once been their village, complete with a shop, a football field and tall, bushy trees.
In the room opposite, the peeling concrete walls had been covered in red love hearts, palm trees, butterflies and a sun beneath the words “No War!!!” in a child’s handwriting.
This room was roughly double the size of the other but had held nearly four times as many prisoners – 136 people lived here.
“It makes me cry when I see this,” Kateryna Balanovych, 60, who had lived in the basement during the occupation, said as she shone a torch over the paintings.
Ms Balanovych shook when she remembered the treatment they were subjected to and how her life had changed in a flash when the Russians invaded.
“Russian soldiers told us we would be transported to Russia and live in a Russian world under Putin,” she said.
“They told us that our village would become a military base and we would all be transported to Siberia to clean and gut fish.”
Ms Balanovych spent many long hours thinking about what she would do if the soldiers did try to take them to Russia.
“I thought I would say: ‘Shoot me. I will not go anywhere. This is my
‘Russian soldiers told us we would all be transported to Siberia to clean and gut fish’
‘I thought I would say: “Shoot me. I will not go anywhere. This is my homeland. I will not leave my country”’
homeland, this is my land, I live here, my grandchildren are all here. I will not leave my country. I will not go anywhere.’”
She added that every day the villagers “prayed to God to stay alive”.
The behaviour of the Russian soldiers was “disgusting”, she added.
Ms Balanovych explained that when the Russians ran out of food they would come down to the basement and order a couple of the villagers – at gunpoint – to go above ground and collect produce for them to eat.
It was on these perilous journeys that they would learn who had been killed. Some had been shot, others were killed by shelling. Either way, they would document it on the wall.
The food that they had foraged was taken by the Russians in exchange for their unwanted military rations, apparently not to the taste of the soldiers.
When people died, either in the shelter or above ground, the gravedigger at the local crematorium was given just 20 minutes a time to bury as many people as he could.
In order to meet his deadline, Yurii Balanovych, 39, had to lay them in mass graves. It is only now the town has been liberated that he is able to start giving the deceased a formal burial. Many are yet to be buried and lie half covered in pits in the crematorium, which is suspected to be lined with mines.
While it is hard for Ms Balanovych to think back to that month underground, she will never forget the resounding silence they woke up to on March 31.
It was a sign that the soldiers had left.
Their parting gift was to lock the villagers in the basement by putting a concrete slab against the door.
When the captives finally managed to escape, they could see that the tanks and military vehicles had gone. Someone found a phone discarded by the Russians and managed to make a call alerting the Ukrainian army to their whereabouts.
“When the soldiers came we were hugging them, we were all very happy to see them,” Ms Balanovych said.
But the Russians had left a trail of destruction in their wake.
“They robbed everything,” she said as she reeled off a list of looted items ranging from gold and microwaves to pillow cases and women’s underwear.
The soldiers laid mines, trashed houses and even slaughtered livestock.
When Ms Balanovych returned home she learnt that they had shot her prized cow. Even weeks later, just saying it out loud brings tears to her eyes.
The village is still not safe. Unexploded rockets remain wedged in the ground, discarded grenades can be seen and there are some streets that cannot be walked down because of mines that were planted and have yet to be cleared.
Despite this, some villagers have now tentatively returned and are working on cleaning out the school basement.
For now it is an awful reminder of the lives of a civilian population who were forced to live in unimaginable conditions during the war.
A 101 Dalmatians duvet cover is still strewn on the floor from when a child leapt out of their makeshift bed when they were told they could finally leave.
Colouring books remain stacked in a pile on a ledge. A checkers board left in mid-game sits on a table.
They are just some of the items that create a picture of what happened underground in this little-known village in Ukraine.
And of course, the calendar. “Our [troops] came here,” Ms Balanovych read out aloud as she shone her torch over the entry for March 31.
“Thank God,” she said. “Thank God.”