Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
—
Mykhailo Yatsentiuk left the basement to make tea for his granddaughter simply because the bomb struck. When he got here to his senses a half hour later all the center part of his house block had been destroyed; the basement the place he had been sheltering along with his household and neighbors was engulfed in flames.
The Ukrainian authorities says 54 folks died on the house advanced on 2 Pershotravneva avenue in Izium, japanese Ukraine, on March 9, nearly half of the constructing’s residents. Whole households have been killed within the assault, together with the Yatsentiuks, Kravchenkos and Stolpakovas.
Their fates remained largely unknown till just a few weeks in the past when Ukrainian forces pursuing a counter-offensive reclaimed Izium after six months of Russian occupation, revealing a mass burial web site on the outskirts of the town.
Many of the residents of two Pershotravneva have been buried there amongst greater than 400 graves, few with figuring out marks apart from numbers daubed on tough picket crosses.
After talking to a survivor, ex-residents and relations, and reviewing images and video taken within the aftermath of the assault and following the city’s liberation, CNN can now inform the story of what occurred at 2 Pershotravneva on that day.
All that was left of the house block have been two towers on both facet with a smoking pile of rubble within the center.
Months later, after the liberation of Izium, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament’s Human Rights Commissioner stood in entrance of the ruins and declared the deaths of these killed there “because of an airstrike by Russian troops” a part of “a genocide of the Ukrainian nation.”
Native residents say that after the airstrike, Russian forces attacked the constructing with tanks, which have been firing from throughout the river.
When the smoke cleared, partitions, flooring and ceilings have been torn off, revealing the properties of the individuals who had lived there. A lot of them have been now useless, buried in their very own basement the place they’d been sheltering.
Yatsentiuk misplaced seven members of his household that day – his spouse Natalia, aunt Zinaida, daughter Olga (additionally recognized by the diminutive Olya) Kravchenko and her husband Vitaly Kravchenko, their son Dima who was 15, Oleksii who was 10 and their 3-year-old daughter Arishka, the grandchild Yatsentiuk had gone to make tea for.
“I began shouting Olya, Natasha, Vitaly… Nobody answered,” he stated. “After I received upstairs [to the ground floor], I sat down and began crying, screaming. Oh God.”
Izium, with a pre-war inhabitants of over 40,000 is a small city, the type the place major faculty classmates keep mates for all times and households reside in the identical constructing for generations. Anastasiia Vodorez and Elena (Lena) Stolpakova grew up collectively.
Vodorez describes the Stolpakovas as a “very blissful, tight-knit” household. “Associates at all times gathered at their place, as a result of we had plenty of enjoyable there,” she instructed CNN from the Czech Republic, the place she has lived for the previous 4 years.
When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started, mates urged Lena to depart Izium however her father Aleksander refused to depart their dwelling at 2 Pershotravneva avenue. When mates realized that Lena’s home had collapsed resulting from shelling, they determined that “till we discovered her, she was alive for us.”
Restoration efforts started on the finish of March; the primary our bodies have been pulled out rather less than a month after the assault. “It was clear then that individuals died in households,” stated Tetiana Pryvalykhina, one other resident of two Pershotravneva, who had left the town however misplaced her “deeply non secular” mom Liubov Petrova within the airstrike.
As an alternative of the basement they’d used as a bomb shelter there was now a crater. “Folks have been torn to items, my mom was torn to items,” Pryvalykhina stated.
Native rescue employees labored underneath the occupying Russian forces to seek out and bury the our bodies. Pryvalykhina’s sister Victoria went to the positioning day by day in hopes of discovering their mom. “Folks have been faceless. It was very troublesome to acknowledge. They carried out the our bodies with no head, carried out the legs and arms individually,” Pryvalykhina remembers her sister telling her.
The Stolpakova household was lastly present in Could. “The entire household was within the basement: Lena, her husband Dima, their two daughters [Olesya and Sasha], Lena’s dad and mom Aleksander (Sasha) and Tania, Lena’s youthful sister Masha, and likewise there was Lena’s grandmother Liuda,” Vodorez stated. The one surviving member of the household was Lena’s different grandmother, Galia, who lived throughout city.
All however 12 of the those who died in that house constructing have been interred at a mass burial web site in a pine forest close to the city, in keeping with Yatsentiuk. Many households stated they weren’t allowed to re-bury or go to their family members’ graves whereas the town was underneath Russian occupation.
Earlier than it was destroyed by falling bombs, 2 Pershotravneva was a constructing recognized on the town for its sense of group and well-kept flower beds. It was a spot the place youthful generations hosted barbecues and older generations gathered to speak.
“The home was at all times full of kids’s laughter, there have been at all times plenty of youngsters on the playground,” recalled Pryvalykhina of her former dwelling.
She left Izium along with her daughter on March 4, simply 5 days earlier than the airstrike that killed her mom. Petrova hadn’t needed to depart her dwelling of greater than 30 years. She was one of many final to be pulled out of its wreckage.
Most graves on the mass burial web site are marked with plain picket crosses; just a few have flowers or wreaths laid upon them.
The Stolpakova household graves have been among the few with names and delivery and loss of life dates written on them. Liubov Petrova’s grave is marked simply with the quantity 283. Others might stay nameless eternally.
Yatsentiuk left Izium after he buried his household in April, however has since gone to go to on a humanitarian mission. Although the Ukrainians at the moment are again in management, there’s nonetheless no electrical energy within the metropolis and other people there lack primary provides like meals and drugs.
He stopped by 2 Pershotravneva on September 30. By then, the rubble had been cleaned up. All that remained have been the skeletons of the 2 towers and flower beds with memorials for the individuals who died right here.
“I visited my home a number of occasions,” he stated. “This time I simply stood and prayed.”