This material describes scenes of violence, death, and hunger that may be traumatic for some readers.
This story is about more than 300 residents of the village of Yahidne in the Chernihiv region, whom Russian occupiers forced into a suffocating school basement on March 3, 2022. It tells of 28 days in cramped conditions, fear, and a constant struggle for every breath of air.
About ten whose lives were cut short in inhuman conditions, and about those who endured, kept a calendar on the door with a piece of charcoal, and gave children the last piece of food. And also about those who, on March 31, after liberation, saw two storks in the sky and realized: life is returning.
This is the story of Valentyna Vasylivna, who spent 28 days in that basement together with her 83-year-old mother and husband.
Valentyna Vasylivna was born in the Chernihiv region, but spent most of her life in the Luhansk region. In the 1970s, her father went to work in a mine and soon moved the whole family there.
In 1996, against the backdrop of economic instability, unemployment, and general despair, Valentyna Vasylivna returned to the Chernihiv region with her family — to the village of Yahidne. There, she got a job as a teacher in the local kindergarten.
February 24, 2022: the beginning of the war
“I woke up very early and heard an explosion,” — says Valentyna Vasylivna about the morning of February 24, 2022. At first, she thought it was the hum of a car, but then she heard a second, third explosion and realized — it was war. Her husband did not allow her to go to work at the kindergarten, and she began calling the children’s parents with the message that the kindergarten would not be operating.
Initially, the village was relatively quiet, because Yahidne is located north of the city of Chernihiv. Valentyna Vasylivna did not pack an «emergency bag» until the last moment, but on March 2nd «just in case» she still decided to pack her documents into a backpack.
March 3: occupation of Yahidne
On March 3, the occupiers entered Yahidne from the rear, from the direction of the neighboring village of Zolotynka. Hearing the sound of vehicles, Valentyna Vasylivna initially thought they were Ukrainian troops. However, when the APCs turned onto her street, she saw circles painted on them and realized they were enemy vehicles. Valentyna Vasylivna rushed from one window to another, peering into the street.
«There was no fear then. There was just curiosity about where they were going and what they were going to do,» — she shares. The woman quickly took several photos to pass on the information, as she believed it was important. The enemy vehicles moved slowly between her house and the school. At the intersection, the occupiers stopped and began firing machine guns at the windows. They were not aiming precisely, but rather firing to frighten people and force them to hide.
Valentyna Vasylivna’s husband, who had gone out to take out the trash, called her from the forest and informed her that the Russians were already in the village, and he could not return because he might be shot. The woman advised him to run to his in-law’s house, where he hid in the basement.
At that same moment, Valentyna Vasylivna wrote in the village group: «The Russians have entered». She wanted to send a photo, but the con‘nection began to disappear.
— I can’t send them, — she told her daughter. — Send them to me, I’ll forward them, — she replied. But even then the mobile signal began to jump — in waves, like the fear that was slowly engulfing the whole village.
Occupiers in the house
After most of the vehicles had left, “Urals” began stopping under Valentyna Vasylivna’s house. The occupiers were breaking fences. They broke a window on the first floor, then the doors in the entrance ʼ, quickly checked the apartments and went up to the second floor. They had to use a tool to get into Valentyna Vasylivna’s apartment because the metal doors wouldn’t give way. The woman and her 83-year-old mother, who was in a state of nervous breakdown and could not move, were in the apartment.
The Russians shouted: “Who is here?”. “Two grandmothers,” Valentyna Vasylivna replied. “Get out!” — they ordered. Valentyna Vasylivna came out, but her mother was lying on the sofa. “Where is the second one?” — one of the occupiers asked. “She is lying there, she cannot get up,” the woman said.
Two soldiers entered the apartment. One stayed with them, and the other went to search.
The occupiers acted like they owned the place, looked through things, took flashlights. They opened Valentyna Vasylivna’s phone and started looking at photos. Later she realized they were looking for photos of the military. They took the phone and tablet, pulled out the cards. “Can we call Russia from this card?” — they asked. “I don’t know, I don’t call there,” the woman replied.
On the same day, another six to eight soldiers of Asian appearance and one of European appearance, probably the commander, came to them. The commander claimed that they had come “to protect from Nazis”, but Valentyna Vasylivna contradicted him: “There are no Nazis here”. The commander did not like this, and he left. The soldiers of Asian appearance stayed and started washing in the shower cabin.
At night it was very dark, the only light was a car burning out at the corner of the street, which the enemies had set on fire. On the morning of March 4, Valentyna Vasylivna took a photo from the window again, seeing “Urals” with circles. She passed the photo to her daughter again. The woman remembers how much she wanted to throw a grenade into the crowd of enemies.
Life in the basement
On the morning of March 4, the women heard gunfire. It became frightening. Valentyna Vasylivna decided to take her mother to the school basement across the street. She asked for permission from an Asian man sitting in the yard, and he allowed it. An occupier with an assault rifle escorted them to the basement, where Vasya the stoker and his wife were already. The woman took boots and very little food with her. When she returned for a blanket, the occupier fired at her feet. He did it just because, for pleasure.
The school basement was dark and damp. Cobwebs in the corners. Old desks were piled on top of each other. A broken globe lay somewhere. On the wall — children’s drawings, faded and covered in dust. Underfoot — creaky boards and pieces of plaster.
From March 4 to 6 people from the entire village of Yahidne began to be taken into the basement. There wasn’t enough space. People started taking everything that was there out into the street. A total of about 360 people gathered in the basement. It was very crowded. On March 5Valentyna Vasylivna’s husband was also brought in.
In total, there were 5 rooms in the basement. «Men and women were together», — Valentyna Vasylivna says about how people were situated in the basement. — «Our entire street was in one room». There were five streets in the village in total.
There was a different number of people in each room. In theirs, there were 37 people, 9 of them children. For the children, they arranged school boards so they could lie down. The rest sat on chairs. Valentyna Vasylivna spent 28 days on a chair. «I slept and sat, slept and didn’t sleep», — she recalls. «If I slept for two hours in a day, it was good». At night, people tried to stay silent to let those who were sleeping rest. It was very difficult.
Some people were allowed to take things, others nothing. There was not enough food. On the first day, the women went hungry, and on the second day, they were thrown several Russian dry rations. Local residents organized food preparation on a fire upstairs in the school, going for food through the yards under escort.
Valentyna Vasylivna rarely went out because she was very worried about her mother.
During the first three days (March 4-6), they were allowed to freely go to the toilet and stand outside, but armed Russians were stationed around the school perimeter. Then they started letting people out less often, often only in the morning and with long queues. There were days when they were not let out until lunch. Later — they stopped altogether, and a bucket was placed in the basement, where everyone went to the toilet: both old and young, men and women. Young women and elderly people had their own hygiene problems, and the inability to wash or change clothes turned the basement into hell.
“It is both the smell and everything together, this whole mixture. People breathed their own waste. It makes me sick just to remember,” the woman shares.
“I thought that we would wait a day and go home,” she recalls. But when Monday, March 7, arrived, it became clear that the occupiers were here for a long time. Then the woman decided to keep a calendar. The pen wouldn’t write, so Valentyna Vasylivna took a piece of charcoal from the fire and started marking the days on the door. It was her personal chronicle, a symbol of resistance and hope.
She looked at the mothers who came with children and their usual things: water, wet wipes, diapers, and used them as if they were at home. “I say: ‘Girls, look.’ It is unknown how long we will sit here. So save your wipes, save the diapers.” Only then did people think about the fact that their captivity could last a long time.
Valentyna Vasylivna told how, on the third day in the basement, a woman ʼappeared with a small child. Her story was like a nightmare. On the highway, their car was hit as they were leaving with their famʼily. Her husband and eldest daughter were killed before the mother’s eyes. Wounded by glass in the head, with a one-year-old child in her arms, she crawled from collective farm fields to the houses, hiding there all night. She recalls that she crawled into a place where, apparently, our military had been, because there was bread, sausage, something that could be eaten. There she was found and brought to the basement. She entered with a vacant look, as if she were already where her loved ones were. The woman was cutting strands of hair, matted with blood, with manicure scissors, and her eyes were empty; there were no tears, no hysteria. Only shock.
There was not enough food. The children were not getting enough to eat. Mothers and grandmothers gave them their meager portions — simply boiled grains, without any additives. Growing children’s bodies suffered from hunger, while adults watched silently as the children grew weaker each day. Once, the Russians brought a cart of bread, but it was only crumbs and scraps mixed with sand.
During the shelling, people fled to the basement because at first they did not understand who was shooting and from where. Only later did they begin to analyze and realize that it was the occupiers themselves who were staging the shelling, and then standing and smiling, watching the panic. “They shoot, and people are afraid and run away,” recalls Valentyna Vasylivna. When they started shooting at the occupiers as well, they also hid. “Even the Tuvans’ eyes became round,” recalls Valentyna Vasylivna. Fear has no nationality.
She also recalls the call signs: “Spider”, “Deaf”, and “Maple”. Only “Deaf” entered their room; he would let the children hold his assault rifle. He also said that his grandfather was from the Zhytomyr region, but he did not know what he would have said about his actions.
The occupiers drove everyone into the basement, including those who were preparing food, when wounded soldiers or supplies were brought in, so that no one would see anything. In the school where the hospital was, wounded enemies were treated.
A 14-year-old boy, who had been wounded in the back by shrapnel, ended up in this hospital. He needed surgery, and the occupiers decided to move him to a field hospital in the village of Vyshneve. However, he was not taken that day because they were evacuating their own wounded. There was simply no room for the boy. He spent the entire night in the basement, bleeding, and was only evacuated the next day. Later, he ended up in Belarus. His relatives managed to find the teenager thanks to a post by a Gomel nurse on social media, and with the help of volunteers, he was returned home.
Harsh conditions and death in the basement
In the basement, where there was no ventilation, the stuffiness was so intense that people stripped down to their underwear, but they were still suffocating. People stood by the door, trying to catch even a breath of fresh air that seeped in from outside. In 28 days, 10 people died, mostly the elderly. “The first to die was an elderly musician. He died because, after all, there was this stuffiness, and nothing to breathe, and all this stress,” says the woman.
If a person died during the day, they were carried out to the yard‘ and placed in the boiler room. If it was in the evening, the body remained until morning next to everyone. “People even sighed, as if there was more space. It is not normal, but in the conditions we were in, that is probably how it was perceived,” recalls Valentyna Vasylivna.
When the dead accumulated, the occupiers allowed several men to go to the cemetery. But this “goodwill” turned out to be a trap: the Russians opened fire on the cemetery, and shrapnel wounded those who had come to bury the deceased.
It was very difficult for the children without movement. One girl with her mother had a baby stroller where her legs were hanging down, and she cried from discomfort. Valentyna Vasylivna found a piece of plywood, and the men attached it so that the child could sleep flat.
There was no connection. The occupiers ordered that all phones be handed over, threatening execution by shooting. Valentyna Vasylivna gave up her old phone while still in the apartment, but she hid the new one that was with her. When the occupiers began conducting searches, her husband told her: «Give it up, it’s not worth it».
«I am so grateful to my daughter for setting up cloud storage for me, so that the photos and phone numbers all remained there», — the woman says.
The occupiers stopped letting people go home, explaining that after their visits, shelling would start, hitting their equipment. The cows that the villagers used to milk were shot.
Valentyna Vasylivna recalls seeing a Belarusian emblem on the occupiers’ uniforms, although she doesn’t know if they were Belarusians themselves or just the uniforms. According to her observations, there were both European-looking men and several Buryats among the military; there were few Tuvans on the school grounds.
When people came out of the basement, they saw military equipment standing in the gardens under every house: tanks, APCs, «Tigers». «They could not be counted. Because they had swarmed the whole village», — the woman recalls.
Looting
Valentyna Vasylivna only went home twice. Her apartment was turned upside down: things from all the cupboards were shaken out and lay in a pile — clothes, photographs, books, even small threads and buttons. The looting was systematic. When they were still allowed to go to the toilet, residents saw the occupiers bringing items from all over the village in bags and sacks to their «Ural» trucks.
The vehicles were completely packed with looted goods: from washing machines and tools to personal belongings. In Valentyna’s house, the occupiers carried a microwave oven out into the hallway but never took it. After the liberation, people found their belongings on completely different streets.
Thus, Valentyna Vasylivna’s co-mother-in-law found her box with documents in someone else’s house while cleaning. «She says she was in shock that she went to clean and found her box with documents», — Valentyna Vasylivna recalls.
Liberation and return to life
On March 30, people heard the sharp drone of enemy machinery. Then came an oppressive silence. The bravest broke down the doors and went out, but there was no one around. However, the fear that had gripped people for a month was so strong that they did not dare to leave their shelter immediately. That night, March 30, the residents of Yahidne once again spent in the damp basement, despite the fact that the danger seemed to have passed. Only on the morning of March 31 did they step out into the yardʼ.
«And then, you know, our military enters. I can’t express to you what emotions those were. Oh, there was laughter, and tears, and shouting, and it was such joy», — recalls Valentyna Vasylivna. Medical aid arrived. Just as the military entered, people lifted their eyes to the sky and saw two storks flying above them. «It was, you know, as if some kind of life was returning to us», — says the woman.
Our military said that there would be an evacuation the next day. On April 1, buses arrived. Valentyna Vasylivna took her mother because she understood that she needed medical help. «We drove very carefully, two buses, all the way afraid to turn left or right», — she recalls. On the way, she saw shelled trees, and then «for the first time in all that time, tears burst out, the emotion broke through. I cried a lot».
They were taken to Kulykivka, where they registered, and then went to Kyiv. Valentyna Vasylivna planned to go to her daughter in the Rivne region, but in Kyiv, she found out that her daughter was already in Germany. Her in-law took them to his friend in the Cherkasy region.
At first, it was difficult for Valentyna Vasylivna to imagine returning home, because «all of this is broken, all of this is lying around, so shattered». But after three or four days, she really wanted to go home. A month later, they returned. Two salaries remained on the salary card, which saved them. Money was also transferred to her husband. They bought tools and began to restore the house.
People returned gradually. ‘Life was returning, they began to do something with their hands, to clean up, to keep their hands busy, so that their heads wouldn’t ache, as they say, so they wouldn’t return to these memories,’ — says Valentyna Vasylivna. In their garden, APCs had churned up pits, but they filled them in and leveled them.
The school and kindergarten in Yahidne have not resumed operation. They decided to make a museum there. Children are taken by bus to other schools. Recently, in the club that served as an ammunition depot, a man was blown up by a mine. ‘This will go on forever,’ — says Valentyna Vasylivna, understanding that the consequences of the war will be felt for a long time.
Many houses burned down or were destroyed. ‘There was not a single undamaged house or apartment, all were damaged,’ — she recalls. But thanks to volunteers and the state, the village has recovered.
Valentyna Vasylivna’s mother is holding on, though it is very difficult for her. ‘Three wars have fallen upon my life,’ — she says. ‘One was a patriotic war, the second, she says, in Donbas, and the third is here.’
Valentyna Vasylivna admits that one can talk about the basement endlessly, because it hurts. Memories have dulled a little, but they return anyway. She herself can go down to the basement and look at it ‘like in a movie,’ not believing that she was there. And some people cannot even walk past the school.
This story is a testament to the resilience of the spirit of the Ukrainian people, who, despite the horror and pain they have experienced, find the strength to return to life, believe in the future, and see the storks flying in the sky as a sign of hope.
This material was prepared by Natalia Chufeshchuk and Tetiana Krylova within the framework of the advanced school ‘Truth through Stories,’ implemented with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).