Chernihiv, a key northern city on the route of the Russian invasion of Kyiv, located 120 kilometers from the capital, held out for seven days before being destroyed by the Russians.
With every gust of wind, pieces of walls, pieces of furniture and broken glass are unhooked from the foot of the remains of the towers in the center of Chernigov, gutted the day before by Russian bombardment. Keeping his eyes on the ground, Sergei slides to avoid them, the bag of cat food strapped to his chest like a shield.
“Corpses were everywhere on the ground. They were in line at the pharmacy here, and they are all dead,” this survivor testifies in the same breath, still completely disoriented by the incessant howl of sirens warning of an imminent strike. Chernihiv, a key northern city on the route of the Russian invasion of Kyiv, located 120 km from the capital, lasted seven days.
In the eighth, Russian troops showed that it was no longer about fighting or ratcheting up the pressure, but about crushing the city, evoking images of desolation most seen since Grozny in Chechnya and 1995. Thursday, noon, Russian aircraft launched from neighboring Belarus, began to roar, first from afar, then closer and closer.
A few images from this report that first scared me yesterday at #Chernihiv, a city covered in Russian bombs, hours before the mousetrap closes over its inhabitants. I thought about Grozny. pic.twitter.com/lRQvuZ6GZH
— Daphne Rousseau (@daphnerousseau) March 5, 2022
Arriving over a residential area that also housed a clinic, they fired a hail of small propeller-driven devices spinning in the sky, cluster bombs, Sergei Bludny, a resident who collected the remains, told AFP, as evidenced by multiple images of the strike posted on social media.
In a less than ten-minute raid on this still densely populated area and on two neighboring schools that served as a rear base for soldiers, 47 people were killed on February 24, in one of the deadliest strikes since the start of the war.
“But what do these assholes want?!” releases the survivor, 48-year-old Sergei Bludny, as the terrifying rumble of bombers cuts through the air again.
The Russian army, which had already broken through to the northeast of Sumy, tried to act, having mastered the Chernigov junction with the Russian direction of attack from the north, which was already on the outskirts of Kiev.
“Stay Hidden”
To take the city, which usually has 300,000 inhabitants, Moscow seems to have decided to empty it first. On Friday morning, the last columns of civilians left. A disciplined line of several thousand cars took to the road in the direction of Kyiv, with signal lights on, all with scotch tape or on a sheet with a visible inscription “CHILDREN” on the windshield.
Pyotr Bagatyuk, 65, was unable to reunite with his family in time to leave. “My heart is broken, my children didn’t have time to leave, my grandchildren are still there and I will come to pick them up,” the resident said.
At a secret location, fearful of becoming the next target on the list, some local officials try to arrange for the last civilians to survive.
“Today we are making camouflage material for our guys, the priority is to remain undetected from the enemy,” explains Deputy Mayor Regina Husak from this headquarters.
The remaining two places, located in the schools that were attacked the day before, are lost. Everything was packed in this one: from floor to ceiling stacks of canned food, warm clothes and in one corner mattress covers for children and the elderly, fear made them lose control of their bladder during the bombing.
Red Cross volunteers also gathered there. “He fell on the house, there’s a fire, we’re going to look, unknown casualties,” one of them interrupts before running out with recognition – and out into the open. Ukrainian soldiers are invisible.
Chernihiv is brought back to life, more saved than defended, by a handful of armed volunteers from the “terrodefense”, civilians who have joined the territorial defense, paramedics and a few overworked firefighters.
“We will die”
Denis Rokaz, 25, electrician, keffiyah and combat glasses on his head, drives around the city with a friend in his car, techno at full speed to the sounds of sirens and explosions, which he no longer pays attention to. “Rockets are now and so day and night. But we will fight and help in any way we can,” launches a galvanized, as in a video game, policeman, opening the trunk.
Inside is a teddy bear, a bunch of medicines and first aid supplies, and a rocket launcher.
The sensational resistance of Chernihiv residents, who just four days ago filmed the first two Russian tanks that had gone astray being pushed away with their bare hands, seems to belong to another era.
By Friday evening, everything accelerated, and the inhabitants found themselves in a mousetrap.
The burning oil depot blown up by a rocket enveloped the entire southern sector of the city in a cloud of impenetrable smoke, the one through which it was still possible to exit.
In the north, west and east, Russian tanks took up positions on the plains and in the thickets, shelling everything approaching, AFP journalists say.
Eventually, the only axis still traversable, the antediluvian bridge to the south that crosses the river, collapses in turn.
At the entrance to the bridge, several civilian vehicles are doing their best, and in their direction at low altitude, the “Dry”, a slender black silhouette, rushes.
At the very first bomb dropped a few tens of meters away, everyone collapses on the asphalt, those present scream in fear.
“We will die if we stay here,” the woman screams. A dazed and frightened Ukrainian police officer crouched behind his car yells at them to drive on before the next impact. He doesn’t know if the bridge is still holding. He does not know what awaits them on the other side.
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