It was 6:40 a.m. on February 24, the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the bombardment there continued for almost a month. Nekazakov said he sat on the floor in his basement at night for 20 days. In the cold light of day, he and other residents of his neighborhood emerged to witness the damage that had been done to their homes and made plans to find safer shelters.
“For a long time, the shells came – the rockets came,” he said.
The Russian missiles and missiles that decimated buildings, lives and homes were fired from a sprawling Russian base hidden in the forest about 4 kilometers away.
Now only the remains of this sprawling military camp stand among the trees. CNN was guided through the camp by Ukrainian special forces, who are finding clues under the rubble as to what Russia’s plans for the capital may have been.
At the start of the invasion, as Russian troops advanced towards Kyiv, Ukrainian special forces believed 6,000 marines had camped in this pine forest for a month, through rain, snow and temperatures that plummeted to -12 degrees Celsius (about 10 degrees Fahrenheit). . . The site included a main command post and headquarters. From here and a nearby field, the Russian army launched attacks on Kyiv, Hostomel and the nearby town of Bucha.
“Here they made a decision on deploying further actions, on the direction of the offensive, tactics of action and so on,” a Ukrainian special forces officer told CNN, showing where each part of the operation was located.
Huge ridges are visible where troops had fired Grad rockets from a field forty kilometers (roughly 25 miles) from the capital. In the woods, discs from fired Grad rockets and boxes of ammunition lie on the ground at launch positions.
Russian forces built shelters, command posts, ammunition dumps, and communication lines using the trees and wood from the forest.
They slept in underground fortifications covered in wood and green wooden crates that once contained BM-21 degree multiple rocket launchers and tube artillery. Black wires connected all dwellings in the forest for communication.
The forest was also littered with food containers emblazoned with Russian military branding: A special forces member discovered a sodden notepad left behind containing instructions from a previous deployment to Azerbaijan. A Russian camouflage and camouflage guide, as well as clothing and shoes, were also discovered at the scene.
Pointing to the size of the camp, an officer told CNN: “The Russians are not fighting in quality, but in quantity.”
“They don’t see soldiers as people, for them they are cannon fodder and consumables. The Russian army’s tactics are perhaps similar to the Middle Ages, when they won not by skill but by quantity,” he added.
Remnants of military equipment, clothing, and fortifications aren’t the only things left behind by the Russians.
According to local residents and a priest, Russian soldiers stormed into nearby residential areas, occupied houses and terrorized local residents they came into contact with.
The torture, humiliation and shallow graves of people killed by those on the base now haunt these villages.
“I’ve been beaten…but I’m alive”
Vitaliy Chernysh, from the village of Zdvyzhivka on the outskirts of Kyiv, said he was cycling through his village when he was captured by Russian forces who were “chasing Nazis”. He said they held him for nearly 24 hours.
Chernysh remembers praying in the last minutes of his life. “[I was] blindfolded, hands tied and all around me. They shot,” he told CNN.
Chernysh said he was locked in a shed after being forced to walk through a minefield. He said Russian soldiers considered pouring gasoline on him and threatened to take him to the crematorium. The soldiers shot around his body while he was tied up and kept asking him what his last wish was, he said. He said he was left in the freezer shed for hours.
“I was beaten on the arms and legs below the waist. The bruises remain,” he said. I thought my leg was broken, I was limping. But I’m alive and well, thank God.”
In his garden, a rocket artillery still lies in his field – another daily reminder of his painful ordeal and the near month under Russian occupation and attack. Chernysh survived, but other residents were killed after being tortured by soldiers pouring out of their forest stronghold.
Vasiliy Benca, a local priest in Zdvyzhivka, told CNN that Russian troops, tanks and armored cars were rushing towards the village and stayed there for a month. People were afraid to emerge from their basements, he said. When Benca did, he said he found five men whose bodies had been mutilated in the garden – and two others in the woods.
“The Russians asked – or forced – me to bury two (extra) women in the cemetery,” Benca told CNN.
Nekazakov, who fled when the Russians attacked his village, has now returned to his home in Hostomel. He remembered all the bodies he drove past, he said, and regretted there was nothing he could do about it.
Now, he said, he hates Russian President Vladimir Putin and the soldiers who devastated his hometown.
“I only feel hatred. We would not have thought in hundreds of years that something like this could happen,” he said, looking at the graves of the deceased. “We can’t forgive it for the rest of our lives.”