An eyewitness account of the crimes of the Russian military in the village of Ivanivka, mass looting, and the life of civilians under constant fire in March 2022.
A small village in the Chernihiv region with a population of almost one and a half thousand residents. In Soviet times, Ivanivka survived the Holodomor, and from March 5 to 30, 2022 – occupation by the Russian military.
Our team of storytellers arrived in Ivanivka to talk to an eyewitness of these events – Ms. Maria, a local resident. Maria doesn’t mind. She says, sighing, that it is important to record this. When asked what she remembers about February 24, 2022, she cries. It’s hard to remember, but after a short pause, she tells her story.
For security reasons, the names of the protagonists and some personal details in this story have been changed.
That day
The occupiers entered Ivanivka on March 5, 2022. They arrived on armored personnel carriers from the village of Zolotynka. First came reconnaissance, then other units. Maria recalls: ‘We thought they would just pass through. Around lunchtime, I was still busy around the house. The neighbors came and said: this and that. They heard they were coming here, to Ivanivka. I didn’t believe it. We heard shelling, gunfire. The neighbors called my husband and me into the cellar. It was across the road from our house.’
During the day, the occupiers drove into every small street, and closer to evening, they broke into the homes of local residents. ‘We heard sounds: something banging, knocking. We came out of the basement to look. Near our house stood an APC and a tank. There were many soldiers. It was already getting dark, but we saw someone shining a flashlight in the windows of our house and the neighbors’.’
There was a car in the neighbor’s yard; they slashed the tires and broke the glass. Taras (my husband) tells me: ‘Don’t stick your head out, they have night vision devices.’ That night we stayed in the cellar,” — this is how the woman recalled that day. Along with her and her husband in the cellar were a neighbor woman and her husband, her kum’s niece with two children, and the local priest, Father Vasyl, who had come to hear the confession and give communion to the neighbors’ already bedridden grandmother.
“You don’t live here anymore”
A cold March night, feeling like winter. The couple didn’t have time to take anything. Maria says she had prepared an emergency bag but didn’t think she would have to use it. She even hid valuables: cash and gold jewelry in a folder with documents. Surprisingly, they weren’t found. Warm clothes remained in the house. Her husband Taras dared to pay a visit there.
Maria supported the brave decision: “I decided to go with my husband. Our house was barricaded, the gates and wicket were closed. An occupier came out of my house. Short, about a meter and a half tall: – What do you want? – This is my house. – You are not allowed here. – How so, let me into my house. – Get back, bitch. You don’t live here anymore. He cocks his assault rifle. I was scared, but if he hadn’t had the rifle, I would have grabbed and wrestled him. My husband took me by the shoulders and we left.”
There was a lot of machinery near the woman’s house. Later, the couple found out that one of the armored personnel carriers was a refueler, which other vehicles approached for refueling. Maria says she dreamed that a missile would hit it and destroy the occupiers, but then not a trace of their house, or even the whole street, would have been left.
In the house
On March 7-8, the couple tried once again to enter the house. Maria describes what she saw like this: ‘Wounded men were being kept in my house; everything was covered in blood. They broke the plates, threw away the pots with burnt buckwheat—smashed them on the asphalt—and hauled out our belongings. My husband went back again later. I told him, go and get some of our things, like a hat for me, some warm clothes. He came back and said there was nothing of either mine or your clothes left.’
First one group was there, then others moved in. Bashkirs, Tuvans. They chopped up the kitchen stools. The next day I went by myself; I walked into the kitchen. I saw… a Russian sitting there, with open jars of cucumbers, tomatoes, and jam on the table. He said to me: ‘Sit down, mother, I will treat you—tea or coffee?’
I thought, Lord, may you choke on it. I went into the house. They were on the beds and on the floor. My living room is large: 6 by 5 meters. I saw they had dragged in some mattresses; they were lying in blood and dirt. Next to each were assault rifles and some ‘Mukha’ launchers. The curtains were torn. It was a nightmare. We had slaughtered a pig just before the invasion, and they took the meat out of the fridge; dogs were dragging those bags around the yard.
The absence of order and the chaos are what the Russian military brought with them. This continued throughout the entire occupation. On March 14, Maria managed to enter her home again: ‘When the second group moved in, my husband went there; their commander lined them up and said: ‘Listen to me carefully: if a chicken or a duck goes missing here in the house or from the neighbors, I will shoot everyone on the spot.’ On the tenth day we went in, and one of them was running around saying: ‘Mother, mother, give me a painkiller’ (one of them had his leg blown off; he was screaming, lying in the living room). I had tablets there, but the first ones who were there had taken them long ago. They were waiting for a Kamaz truck to come and take him. Some shell-shocked men were lying on the sofa, and in another room were the wounded. In the evening, the Kamaz arrived and took them away.’
‘We need a guitar, we need vodka’
The occupiers destroyed property and robbed houses; in the evenings, they drank heavily. Maria and her husband Taras spent the entire occupation in a neighbor’s cellar. They were afraid that drunk soldiers would come and throw a grenade in the middle of the night or shoot them. The occupiers practically did not communicate with the locals. They called each other by name (Lyokha, Vanya, Tolya, etc.); the woman suspects the names were fake. On the eighth or ninth day, someone knocked on the cellar door with a rifle butt.
“They come at two in the morning, saying: we need a guitar, we need vodka. I say: but you’ve already taken everything. The only thing we had in the cellar was a walnut tincture made with moonshine; the bottle had been there for a long time, the walnuts were already black. That one dipped his finger in, said: ‘this is it,’ and took it. Then they started again: we need guitars, but where am I going to find you a guitar in a cellar? A neighbor who was sitting with us said she had a balalaika. She actually did have one. It’s their national instrument, yet they didn’t take it,” – the woman says they visited for alcohol often. They even went around trading stolen items for vodka from the locals. After getting drunk, they would shoot at gates, wickets, and houses.
A call from her daughter
“We were scared. They get high, they get drunk, and they shoot aimlessly. Something is constantly flying over the village—rumbling, explosions. My daughter, her husband, and my granddaughter were in Kolychivka, and they wanted to come to Ivanivka. Just as they were driving toward Ivanivka, the shelling started. Something large flew past them.”
We found out about it later because there was no connection; we couldn’t call them. I was very worried about them. One time, my husband rushes in, crying, screaming: they called him and said: “We love you, but we were killed by a bomb.” We thought our daughter and son-in-law had come under fire. I didn’t understand what was happening. My heart started aching. A neighbor had to revive me. Later, we managed to get through. Everything was fine with the children. That call was set up by them (the occupiers).”
Underwear, a fur coat, and high heels
Despite the difficult conversation and heavy memories, Maria does not forget to joke: ‘They left their shoes and uniforms. Their boots didn’t even match the size of their feet; their legs were buckling. They might have had a size 38 foot, but they wore a 46. They took my sneakers. It’s a good thing they didn’t take my high heels with them. By the way, my husband saw women’s underwear with hearts on a photograph of one of their captured colonels. He says: ‘Maria, look, aren’t those yours?’. A neighbor said she saw how one of them was walking in my fur coat, my hat, and my boots, and then he went into his APC. My white hat turned black.’
After the withdrawal
The occupiers left the village on the day of Alexey the Warm, March 30. Maria says: ‘They left quickly. A small Tuvinian said over the phone: ‘I understood you, 15 minutes’. They loaded whatever they could. They unscrewed our washing machine, but they didn’t have time to load it. They took away pots, belongings, and towels. The car drove around, and they were loading everything up.’
A fellow villager said she saw how they stole a plasma TV from a house, but they just couldn’t fit it into that APC: they twisted it this way and that. Eventually, they got tired of it, so they took it, broke it in half, and threw it away. And in our yard, towels were lying in blood, and all the photos were scattered: near the toilet, in the garden.’
They completely cleaned out my cellar. They ate all the preserves intended for three years ahead. They threw out the potatoes, and they even ate the seed potatoes. A Tuvinian arrived on a motorcycle (‘Muravey’) and said to Taras: ‘Can we find something to eat here? There’s nothing left at all.’ Then he left.’
Tuvinians and other ethnic groups within the occupying forces did not understand basic things. For example, instead of turning on the gas in the stove, they burned wood in it without turning off the gas water heater. The woman says: ‘One gas explosion — plus a tank and a gas station near the house — and our street would be gone. And they also started digging trenches in the middle of our yard, where a gas pipe passes. Taras screams: ‘What are you doing? There’s gas there!’. They listened. They dug a little further. We found their things in that trench, and everything was smashed, scattered, and burned. I said to my husband: ‘it smells of the Russian spirit’.’
It won’t always be like this
An hour passed. The interview came to an end. Maria decided to chat with us a bit more off the record. She says that they are still repairing the house, and the village is slowly recovering. On this note, we said goodbye. After leaving the village council, we turned our attention to the right to a large burnt building – a house of culture destroyed by the Russians. In contrast, I was reminded how in the old great-grandfather’s house, the words ‘It will not always be this way’ were scratched on the doorframes.
The interview was recorded on July 29, 2025, in the village of Ivanivka, Chernihiv region, Ukraine.
The text was prepared by Bohdan Koziychuk, interviewed by Olena Koziletska, technical support – Nataliia 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).