At the heart of the European Parliament in Brussels, a grand August Förster piano lies in pieces on the floor, blackened and burned. Now far from home, the instrument once stood proudly inside Irpin’s Central House of Culture, which was destroyed by shelling during the Russian army’s failed
On March 23, Kyiv resident Olena Sukhenko got the most terrifying phone call of her life. “Russians came to our house,” her younger brother told her. “They took our mother. Our father went with her.” She felt the ground slipping out from beneath her feet. Olena asked her brother to
MAKARIV, Kyiv Oblast – Life is timidly reappearing in the half-destroyed town of Makariv. A dozen women in headscarves and rolled-up sleeves clean up the street, armed with brooms, against the apocalyptic backdrop. Not far, one of them is crying on her husband's shoulder. Ripped-open buildings and craters are everywhere, the
Seven people gathered on March 14 in a tiny church in the hitherto flourishing downtown neighborhood of Podil. The normally packed and bustling area stood eerily empty, like a set of a post-apocalyptic film. A frigid silence hunkered down over the district, interrupted occasionally by the faint thunder of the
STOYANKA-2, Kyiv Oblast – In the village of Stoyanka-2 outside Kyiv, a half-dozen cars line the road, riddled with holes, their bodywork mangled by bullets and an explosion. Their windows, bearing handwritten Ukrainian signs saying “Children” are perforated or shattered. The suitcases inside the vehicles appear to have been searched. The
Editor’s Note: The following is a personal account of the Kyiv Independent’s journalist describing spending a day with a small group of volunteers helping people get out of some of the most dangerous areas outside Kyiv. IRPIN AND STOYANKA, Kyiv Oblast – A clear, frigid day rises over Irpin.
IRPIN, Ukraine — Hundreds of terrified people cautiously walk through the debris of concrete and twisted metal, trying to cross the Irpen River on foot. “Come on, no need to rush, careful,” a Ukrainian soldier says while helping civilians onto concrete blocks leading to a stairway. Mothers hold up their crying
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