04/09/2022 16:19 (act 04/09/2022 19:16)
The extent of the devastation on Borodyanka is overwhelming. ©AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda
After the withdrawal of Russian troops, rescue work begins at Borodyanka. The small Ukrainian town was largely destroyed by bomb attacks, and there is almost no hope for survivors.
Eyes red from tiredness and crying, Antonina watches immobile as the bulldozer digs through the rubble of a building in Borodyanka. On the night of March 1, the Russian air force dropped a bomb on the three-part apartment block in the small Ukrainian town. Since then, she hasn’t heard from her 43-year-old son Yuri, who lived on the third floor of the house.
Maybe he managed to get out,” says Antonina. Maybe he’s injured under the rubble. “I can’t say, I don’t know,” she adds, bursting into tears. For the 65-year-old, it’s the unbearable waiting and uncertainty.
Zelenskyj: Situation in Borodyanka “much more terrible” than in Bucha
Before the war, nearly 13,000 people lived in the small town northwest of Kiev. But Borodyanka was largely destroyed by Russian bombing. Nothing else is where it should be. The extent of the devastation is overwhelming. Some houses just don’t exist anymore.
In late March, Ukrainian troops managed to recapture Borodyanka and the surrounding region from the Russians. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj described the situation in the small town after the withdrawal of Russian troops as devastating. It is “much more terrible” than in Bucha, where several bodies of civilians shot were found after Russian soldiers withdrew.
How many people died in Borodyanka is still unclear. Attorney General Iryna Venediktova recently said 27 bodies had been recovered from the rubble of two apartment blocks alone. Rescue work has just begun, the first explosives disposal teams had to secure the area.
The extent of the devastation is overwhelming
Antonina is sitting alone among rubble and ruins on a chair in what used to be a small garden behind her son’s house. With her chin resting on her hands, which hold a stick, she sadly watches rescue workers use heavy construction machinery to lift parts of the wall and remove the rubble.
The central part of the building is just a hole, and in a split second ten apartments were razed to the ground. Only broken concrete and bent metal parts remained. “People in the two outer blocks of the building were injured but survived,” she says. Everyone in the middle part is dead.
Scattered among the remains of the house are shoes, a book, a water pistol and stuffed animals. A mattress hangs over the branch of a tree.
“We were in the basement for almost a month and a half”
On the ground floor of one of the two side parts, Lyubov Yaremenko places a brown sofa on what used to be his small balcony. She protects him from the oncoming rain with a sheet of plastic. It’s almost the only piece of furniture he has left.
Inside your apartment is pure devastation. The force of the bomb knocked doors off their hinges, windows shattered, boxes shattered and clothing scattered all over the floor. Yaremenko was in the basement of the house at the time of the attack. “We were in the basement for so long, almost a month and a half,” she says.
Hope for survivors after Borodyanka attacks close to zero
Across Borodyanka’s main square, two firefighters are digging through the remains of another eight-story house. In search of victims, they climb a fire escape directly over the torn, smoke-black facade to the destroyed apartments.
“We would like this to be a rescue operation,” says Svetlana Vodolaha of the Kiev rescue service in Borodyanka. But the bombings had already taken place in late February or early March. Survivors’ hope is close to zero.