From food – only a teaspoon of honey per day: how people survived in Izyum during the occupation

We don’t go into green areas, we go strictly along the marked paths, those who have masks – take them with you – the police are briefing journalists. The territory may be mined, a step aside for the red tape may be the last. In a few minutes, about a hundred national and international correspondents will see the consequences of the terrible crimes of the Russians – the mass burial of civilians and soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Izyum Forest.

Almost every body has been reburied a second time, because at first local residents buried the dead simply in the yards of houses – because of shelling and because the occupiers did not allow people to move through Izyum, even to the cemetery.

Local teacher Tetyana Savchenko shows her neighbor’s burial place:

– Almost everyone who died at that time was buried in the yard. This is where there was a place, now melons are growing, this is where a comrade was buried. Here are his windows. Then he was reburied in the forest. There is still a cross and a coffin there.

The man was sick with cancer, diapers could not be found, there was no medicine – the occupiers and marauders robbed all the pharmacies. He, like all residents of Izyum, lived without electricity, water, in a cold apartment, under constant shelling, and, according to the NSDC, Izyum suffered the most from rockets among all Ukrainian cities.

Two teachers looked after him. That morning, he refused the tea and fresh-soup that the neighbors had cooked on the fire, only asking for hot water. And within an hour he was found hanged. The man could not stand the inhuman living conditions, the teachers say.

– Natalia’s friend found the boys (we won’t bury him), for one thousand hryvnias they brought a wreath, a coffin, a cross, a plaque – and they buried him here. Why here? Because we were under bombardment all the time. And when they ordered a reburial, the guys came and dug it up – they left the cross and the coffin. And they took me to the forest, – says the woman.

Before the occupation, 50,000 people lived in Izyum, now there are about 10,000 left. Such data are provided by the city council. At least a thousand civilians died during the occupation.

We stop in Izyum, next to the stele with the name of the city there is a Russian tricolor. Almost everyone who stops to take a photo of destroyed Russian equipment wipes their feet on it – a burned Sontsepok, a trophy T-80 tank.

We drive through Izyum and what we see makes our blood run cold. The city was destroyed by 80% – residential buildings, administration, shops, medical facilities, pharmacies, the heating system was destroyed. From time to time, people can be heard telling each other where humanitarian aid is given. Everything is needed – food, medicine, clothes. Someone turns away from the camera, because he is terribly scared – the occupiers will suddenly return, they say, wait for death. But most cry when they remember how they met the Ukrainian army.

– I thought maybe it was a joke? Yes, there was, they were looting, and suddenly ours, I don’t believe it, I think, maybe it’s like a ghost or something! Do you understand? I couldn’t even believe that ours came in! I still don’t believe it! – recalls Larisa Kolesnyk, a resident of Izyum.

During the occupation, they say, residents of Izyum died not only from shelling, but also from torture, cold and hunger. We meet Rita Tkachenko on the pedestrian bridge over the River Siverskyi Donets – it was the only one that connected two parts of the city during the occupation. Rita has three children, the youngest, Sofia, was three months old when the Russian Federation came to Izyum with “liberation”. The girl was saved by her mother’s milk, the older children were starving for several days, she says.

 – We have Veronika, Nikita and Sofia. Sofia is now 9 months old. I also did not eat anything, I understood that I had to feed her. Just a sip of water for the whole day and that’s it, and darkness – nothing more! We survived on honey, a teaspoon a day and that was it. They sat, sucking all day. For how long? About five days, said the mother of three children.

Nataliya, a resident of Izyum, built a fire near the high-rise building and cooks food on the fire – there is no water or electricity in the house. And heats water to buy 8-year-old Denys.

– Yesterday we scraped off the last 10 hryvnias, which were coins. They started taking them. They didn’t accept it then! The children are scared, we were afraid to leave the basement until April, we are preparing food, and he is standing on the stairs to see the world of God, – says the woman.

Along the way, we see a shop, set up in the semi-basement of a high-rise building. The products were brought from occupied Kupyansk, says the saleswoman, who refused to give her name:

– Buckwheat, this is the stew of the Kupyansk meat processing plant, this is the beef stew. Stewed pork. This is what we were able to bring, because people need something to eat. We even thought of closing down, because we were afraid to go to Kupyansk, everything was under fire. People knelt down and said: “Go, bring us food!”.

The shop assistant first asks not to film her, and then, when she begins to remember the horrors she experienced, she cannot stop.

– My mother froze, she froze in her house, because there was no light, no gas, no water. My own mother froze in just one month! And she is not old, she is 75 years old. The war began on February 24, and she died on March 22. I buried six! My mother, my beloved nephew was killed by a shrapnel. And four are still in that house, – she recalls the experience.

Anatoly continues the saleswoman’s story. He says that the Russian military tortured him in the basement for two days. The man was hiding from the shelling, he was arrested when he went to the restroom.

– The Ural stops with OMON police: “What are you doing here?” I say I’m going to the toilet. The two of us were taken away, taken to the pit, to the police. They were beaten, their ribs were broken. They could find fault with anything! Why are your pliers blue-yellow? Which I bought, I say. Why do you support Ukraine? I say – I’m just a driver! – said a resident of Izyum.

The corpses were lying in the middle of the street, the occupants loaded them onto wheelbarrows and took them somewhere, residents of Izyum say. And the people buried in the yards were ordered to be reburied closer to the summer by the occupation authorities. Relatives dug up the dead themselves, and if there were no relatives left in the city, volunteers did it.

After the release of Izyum, law enforcement officers searched for a mass burial. In the forest at the exit from the city, there are hundreds of crosses, some of them have name plates. For example, there is a burial of a whole family – three generations – mom, dad, their two daughters and old parents. People died in March from a Russian airstrike on a high-rise building.

Facts ICTV

The basement, where people were hiding, became a mass grave for 47 people, and this figure may not be final. Near this house we meet Tetyana. She lived in it, but during the airstrike she was not at home, which, she says, saved her life. Three walls remained from her apartment.

– When the bodies were retrieved, the seven people were not identified – the sand and slabs collapsed. There was little that looked like a human body there, – says Tetyana.

On the morning of September 16, operational teams began exhuming the bodies. Journalists try to get closer to the red tape, behind which several graves have been excavated, but they suffocate almost immediately – the acrid stench of corpses will haunt us for a long time in the car on the way home. The bodies are twisted, mutilated by time, the investigators see traces of torture on them. The first victim had a rope and signs of torture.

– During the examination of the body, the medical examiner recorded a string, which may indicate asphyxiation, or an attempt was made to strangle him. There are also fractures on the hands and feet, which may indicate that this person was tortured, – says Maksym Klymovets, the first deputy head of the Kharkiv District Prosecutor’s Office.

People were simply buried in bags, on most of the plates the numbers: 245, 321 – this is how the occupiers marked the victims of their own crimes. Preliminary burials of 445 civilians, Kharkiv region Prosecutor Oleksandr Filchakov reported.

And nearby is a mass grave, where 17 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are buried. Experts will determine how they died, says the prosecutor. As of the evening of September 17, the bodies of 59 people were exhumed, and after the examination, they will all be reburied with dignity, Oleh Synegubov, the head of the RMA, assured and called the Kremlin’s crimes a genocide of the Ukrainian people.

– Experts of the National Police in the Kharkiv region exhumed 59 bodies in Izyum today. The bodies of 16 civilian men and 26 women will be delivered for further examination. 17 – military personnel. As experts note, most have traces of violent death. Works are ongoing. Mass burials in Izyum number more than 450 graves. This is a tragic and terrible consequence of the six-month occupation. The world must see the crimes of the Russians so that all the guilty are punished! – he emphasized.

The number of victims of Russian crimes in Izyum may exceed Bucha, the Ministry of Reintegration said. In the liberated settlements, law enforcement officers found torture chambers, there were six of them in Izyum alone, said the head of the National Police, Ihor Klymenko.

I return home, a connection appears closer to Kharkiv, dozens of text messages begin to arrive. One of them is from a friend: “Let’s meet and drink coffee.” And I remember how the teacher Tetyana cried and asked: “Tell me, is it true that in Kharkiv you can go to a supermarket and buy everything you want?” And I start to cry myself.