Inside the basement where an entire Ukrainian village spent a harrowing month in captivity
Inside the Basement Where an Entire Ukrainian Village Spent a Harrowing Month in CaptivityFebruary 15, 2023 7:00 AM EST, Russian troops entered the village of Yahidne. They forced the residents out of their homes and into the basement of the local school, which they had turned into their headquarters. Until they withdrew on March 30, 2022, the Russians kept almost the entire population of Yahidne—more than 360 people, including children and the elderly—in that basement for nearly a month.
There was fighting all around the village. Svitlana and Lilia called their families to say that it was too dangerous to leave Yahidne and that they would stay there a while longer. On March 3 the military vehicles entered the village in a long column. Valeriy hurried everyone—the nine members of his extended family and the two guests—into his makeshift bomb shelter.
On the 500 meters that separate his house from the school, Valeriy counted 80 units of equipment: armored personnel carriers, tanks, mortars. Soldiers with red armbands were bustling about, hauling ammunition. By Lisova Street a dead body lay on the ground. Anatoliy Yaniuk had been shot in the head on March 3. He was 30 years old. The Russians had executed him when he refused to lie down on the ground in front of them. “I am on my own land, and I will not lay down in front of you.
Valeriy, his family, and Svitlana and Lilia were already in the basement, sharing the largest room with 150 other people. Later they calculated there was about half a square meter per person: 170 square meters, 367 people . They sat on the bench or on the floor, resting their heads on their neighbors’ shoulders, not knowing if they would live to see the next morning.As the days went on people handled their fear differently.
During the day, people sat in the basement on chairs, benches, and the floor. They slept sitting up. They used bulletin boards to make a platform for the children to lie on. The only way to stretch your legs in those cramped conditions was to stand up. Svitlana and Lilia would take turns lying on two chairs, while the other lay on the floor underneath.
They boiled water for the first time on the third day. They prepared baby food and every morning made porridge for the children. They figured out how to get water from the school well. It was not drinking water, but water nonetheless. Since there was no electricity, they pumped by hand. One stroke brought 100 to 150 milliliters of water; for food and tea, they needed 150 liters.
The list of the dead is etched on a wall, next to a calendar. Valentyna Danilova maintained both. Before the invasion she worked in the kinder-garten, directly above where she was now being held along with her husband and 83-year-old mother. Valentyna found an ember near the cooking fire and used it to write the first date. Then it became a daily ritual. “Did you remember to write down the day?” the 5-year-old boy next to her would ask every morning.
People in villages take their funerals very seriously. They spend decades planning what clothes they will be buried in, preparing embroidered towels that their relatives should hang on the cross. Now people were being buried without a coffin and without a cross. They were taken to the cemetery wrapped in sheets, in a wheelbarrow, their arms and legs hanging out.
When someone with cancer asked him for permission to go home and get their medicine, Klen answered, “If things are so hard for you, there’s the forest—go hang yourself, it’ll get easier.” But toward the end of March, speculation began to spread that the Russians were planning to leave. The people noticed increased movement; there was less security. A hidden joyous premonition of freedom was growing. “Everyone dreams about freedom,” Olha Meniailo wrote in her diary.
The prisoners kicked open the door, and the first men left the basement. They went outside and didn’t see any vehicles, any soldiers. Slowly, one by one, people started going upstairs, outside. To breathe the springtime air. To look at the sky. Birds flew to the school for the first time in a month. That night, nobody locked them in. In the morning, the people went outside whenever they wanted. “My first morning of freedom,” Olha wrote in her diary. Out of habit, they boiled water and made breakfast. Then someone saw men in uniform coming out of the forest. The first reaction was to hide. But they looked closer and saw that it wasn’t a Russian uniform. Then someone shouted, “It’s our guys!”
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