A HARROWING picture shows names of the dead scrawled onto the wall of a basement where kids watched loved ones die in a Russian massacre.
In total there are 17 names etched onto the school basement in the village of Yahidne, north of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, with heartbreaking kids’ pictures also on the walls.
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The villagers were herded into the cramped, airless basement by Russian troops and remained trapped there for since early March until the occupiers retreated from around Kyiv.
The seven names of people killed by Vladimir Putin’s troops are scrawled on the left of the door, Halyna Tolochina, a member of the village council explained.
To the right were the 10 names of people who died of exhaustion due to the harsh conditions in the basement.
“This old man died first. He died in the big room, in this one,” she told Reuters, pointing at the name of Muzyka D – for Dmytro Muzyka – whose death was recorded on March 9.
The grim revelation comes as 50 people, including five kids, were killed when a Russian missile with with “for the children” scrawled on the side blitzed a train station.
The story of what happened in Yahidne is one of the many atrocities that have emerged in the wake of Russia’s retreat, in particular in the town of Bucha.
Tolochina named others she said were killed by Russian soldiers, including Viktor Shevchenko and his brother Anatolii, known as Tolya.
“This one was buried in the yard,” she said, pointing to the name Shevchenko V.
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The villagers in Yahidne said that at first some Russian troops behaved well, offering to share their rations and expressing surprise at the village’s prosperous appearance.
But others began to loot the villagers’ possessions almost immediately.
“They started looting, took everything they could grab,” said 71-year old Petro Hlystun, who witnessed the scene.
“There was a light torch, a tablet computer my son brought from Poland. They took it all.”
Witnesses and described being held in the bare concrete rooms of the basement, with around 60 children, little food or water, no electricity and no toilets.
They described sharing buckets for a toilet and taking turns to sleep in the small, crowded rooms as there was not enough space for everyone to lie down.
“It was almost impossible to breathe,” said Olha Meniaylo.
She was in the basement with her 32-year-old son, his wife and their four-month-old baby boy and an 11-year-old daughter.
She said the Russian soldiers demanded a list of the people in the basement to organize food, and she had tallied 360.
“For the elderly, it was difficult to stay there in the dark without fresh air, so it was mostly the old who died.”
She said that the first burial – a man killed by the soldiers and four elderly people who died in the basement – took place on March 12 with local youths allowed out to dig graves by the Russians.
It was not until the Russians started their withdrawal on March 30 that those trapped in the basement ventured out permanently, said 64 year-old Tamara Klymchuk.
“We opened the door. We were getting out as though we had been born again.”
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