BORODIANKA, Ukraine — The first signal of hassle was when a squad of Chechen troopers burst by the gate.
They jumped from their Jeeps, fight boots hitting the pavement exhausting, and ordered the 500 sufferers and employees of Borodianka’s particular care house into the courtyard, at gunpoint.
“We thought we were going to be executed,” Maryna Hanitska, the house’s director, stated in an interview this week.
The troopers pulled out a digital camera, Ms. Hanitska stated, after which barked at her to make everybody smile. Most of the sufferers have been crying.
“We command you to say to the camera, ‘Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,’’’ the soldiers demanded of Ms. Hanitska.
With several guns in her face, she said, she quickly ran through her options. She would never thank Russia’s president, whom she had called “a liar” and “a killer.”
But she didn’t need the troopers to harm anybody. So she managed to utter, “Thank you for not killing us.”
And then she fainted.
Thus started a nightmarish ordeal at a Ukrainian psychological well being facility in Borodianka, a small city with a couple of condominium blocks that lies at a strategic intersection about 50 miles northwest of the capital, Kyiv.
In greater than a dozen interviews carried out in the previous two days in Borodianka and different cities in the devastated areas round Kyiv, villagers described the Russian troopers as brutal, sadistic, ill-disciplined and juvenile. Their accounts couldn’t be independently verified, however have been per different experiences and visible proof about Russian habits in the area.
The siege at the psychological well being facility dragged on for weeks, throughout which the constructing misplaced warmth, water and electrical energy, and greater than a dozen sufferers misplaced their lives. What unfolded there represents the depths of despair and at the identical time wonderful pluck beneath a quick however harrowing Russian occupation.
Throughout the areas of Ukraine just lately liberated from a monthlong Russian occupation, an extended string of disturbing tales is rising of terror and dying that Russian troopers inflicted on unarmed Ukrainian civilians beneath their management.
Every day, Ukrainian investigators step right into a dank cellar or muddy subject or somebody’s yard and uncover our bodies of villagers who have been shot in the head or bear indicators of torture. More accounts are surfacing of civilians being held as human shields and a few dying from lack of meals, water or warmth. On Friday, Ukrainian officers stated the Russian forces had killed not less than 900 civilians as they withdrew from the Kyiv area.
Much of this distress was meted out in small cities close to Kyiv, the place the Russians occupied a big swath in the early days of the struggle however have been pushed out two weeks in the past by much less outfitted however way more decided Ukrainian forces.
Administrators at Borodianka’s psychological well being house stated that Russian troopers robbed their pharmacy of rubbing alcohol to drink. Villagers somewhere else stated they stole bedsheets and sneakers, and defaced lots of the houses they took over with infantile graffiti. Workers at the psychological well being house additionally stated that on their manner out, Russian troopers scrawled profane messages on the partitions — in human excrement.
“I threw up when I saw that,” Ms. Hanitska stated. “I don’t understand how they were raised, by whom, and who could do this.”
Lypivka, a blip of a village dwarfed by immense wheat fields, was occupied by Russian troopers till March 31. Here, villagers stated the Russians double crossed them.
Some village girls had begged Russian commanders for permission to evacuate, and the Russians appeared to agree. So on March 12, a gaggle of older males, girls and youngsters piled into 14 vehicles and slowly started to drive to what they thought could be security.
“All of us had white flags and we had permission,” stated Valriy Tymchuk, a shopkeeper, who drove a minibus in the convoy.
But then Russian armored personnel carriers swiveled their turrets towards them, villagers stated. A shell ripped into the first automotive. And then one other. And then one other.
The convoy was a fireball.
Mr. Tymchuk stated he noticed a household of 4, together with a younger baby, trapped of their automotive and engulfed in flames. Many of the singed vehicles are nonetheless on the street. The charred bones of that baby are nonetheless in the again seat, Mr. Tymchuk stated. What seemed to be items of bone have been scattered amongst the blackened metallic and heaps of ash.
Next to the vehicles lay two lifeless canine, their fur singed.
Mr. Tymchuk barely escaped after his minibus was hit and shrapnel sliced into his face.
He shook his head when requested why he thought the Russians did this.
“They are zombies,” he stated.
These villages have been on the entrance line, a part of Russia’s failed try to encircle and seize Kyiv. The identical was true of Bucha, one other village north of Kyiv and the web site of the worst atrocities but found. All these locations are quiet now, permitting forensic investigators to do their work. And the extra they give the impression of being, the extra they discover.
In Makariv, one other small city close to Kyiv, authorities stated they just lately found greater than 20 corpses, in numerous yards and houses, many bearing marks of torture. In the Brovary space, farther east, law enforcement officials simply discovered six our bodies in a cellar, all males who apparently had been executed.
“We have seen bodies with knife wounds and marks of beatings, and some with their hands tied with tape,” stated Oleksandr Omelyanenko, a police official in the Kyiv area.
“The places hardest hit,” he added, “were occupied the longest.”
That was the story for Borodianka and the Borodianka Psychoneurological Nursing Home.
Ms. Hanitska, 43 and a former college headmaster, stated she watched from the home windows of the three-story constructing as the Russian vehicles poured in. She counted 500.
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Then, frightened about snipers, the Russians started shelling condominium blocs lining the roads, and dozens of residents died beneath a cascade of rubble, in accordance with emergency service officers.
The shock waves rattled the special-needs house, inbuilt the Nineteen Seventies to offer for adults with neurological and psychological issues. Ms. Hanitska stated a few of her sufferers grew to become aggressive, and three even escaped and have but to be discovered. Others have been terrified and curled up beneath their beds and of their closets.
“It was more than 10 times scary,” stated Ihor Nikolaenko, a affected person.
On March 5, it bought worse.
That’s when the Chechens confirmed up. Chechen troops are particularly dreaded, believed to be extra ruthless than different Russians, a consequence of years of their very own failed separatist struggle towards Russia’s central authorities.
Ms. Hanitska and different employees members stated they might inform the troops have been Chechen by their light-colored beards and the language they spoke amongst themselves. The Ukrainian authorities posted messages on social media through which they referred to the Chechens and warned them to not damage the sufferers.
“These are mostly sick people with developmental disabilities,” Oleksandr Pavliuk, a senior Ukrainian army official, stated in an announcement. “But these are our people and we cannot and will never leave them.”
By this level, for some individuals inside, it was too late. Ms. Hanitska stated that her first affected person died from publicity to the chilly in late February. By early March, a half of dozen extra handed away. In whole, she misplaced 13.
It was 20 levels Fahrenheit inside the constructing, even colder exterior. There was no warmth, no electrical energy, no operating water and little meals. Borodianka was beneath siege, in any case.
“We started drinking water from the pond,” Ms. Hanitska stated. “We all got sick.”
The Chechen contingent mysteriously withdrew the identical day it arrived, after making the propaganda video, however different Russians took their place. They didn’t enable anybody to depart the compound, even to seek for meals, and so they ringed the constructing with artillery, mortars and heavy weapons, understanding the Ukrainians could be reluctant to hit it.
“We became human shields,” stated Taisia Tyschkevych, the house’s accountant.
The Russians took everybody’s telephone. Or virtually everybody’s.
Ms. Hanitska stated she hid hers and used it to speak secretly. She would peek out the window of the nurse’s workplace and spot Russian autos, she stated, after which textual content the particulars to Ukrainian forces. “They were hitting the Russians,” she stated. “If we hadn’t done this, the fighting would be happening in Kyiv.”
Many Ukrainian civilians have helped like this, Ukrainian officers stated.
While she was spying on the Russians, Ms. Hanitska additionally cooked meals on a fireplace exterior, hustled sufferers into the basement when the artillery grew to become deafening, arrange sleeping areas in the corridors for dozens extra individuals who fled the bombed buildings on the town and flocked to her facility for shelter, and greater than anything, helped calm everybody’s nerves.
On March 13, Ms. Hanitska peered out the identical window and for the first time in weeks noticed one thing that lifted her coronary heart: a convoy of yellow buses. She burst out the gate.
“I was either going to get shot,” she stated. “Or save people.”
Humanitarian employees had organized a rescue and the Russians lastly allowed the sufferers to depart. They have been bused to different amenities in much less contested areas.
Ms. Hanitska is hard however humble with a dry humorousness.
When requested how lengthy she had been working at the house, she laughed.
“Two months,” she stated. “I guess you could say I’m lucky.”
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