A security guard of a private housing neighborhood in Stoyanka, a town near Irpin in Kyiv Oblast. Interview conducted on February 23, 2023.
Last year, on the 3rd of March, Russians were already in Stoyanka. At times I keep wondering whether someone helped them to enter the town – they came very rapidly, all at once, came from the forest behind the village, a narrow road known only by the locals. I keep wondering whether there was a way to stop them at all. Right now it doesn’t matter to me much – whichever way they came, they came to kill and destroy my city, destroy my life. A green-growing Stoyanka, and lively Irpin nearby, are now standing on the burned walls and even a year after the Russian presence here, the smell of that cinder does not wash away.
That day, most of my neighbors managed to leave town. I am a guard of a small housing neighborhood and I stayed to do my job and have a look at the houses. In those first days, no one knew what would happen, we didn’t even know what is possible to happen at all. At times I keep wondering if I should have left as well. On the 5th of March, Russian soldiers entered my house and beat me up. They hit my face with rubber sticks, broke my nose, the broken bones of my left cheek did not grow back correctly, and I have a droopy eye now. They were beating my legs to the point when I couldn’t stand on my own anymore, tied my arms behind my back, put a bag over my head and dragged me across the street to their hub.
The Russian hub was an occupied house of my neighbor, the last building in our neighborhood, its windows facing the street which people of Stoyanka and Irpin take to exit the city. In the evening of the 5th of March, Russians hung me on a hook in their hub. On the morning of the 6th of March, from the windows of this occupied house, they shot a convoy of 11 civilian cars, killing people trying to escape the occupation.
At the time of the massacre I was in their hub, hung by my leg on a metal hook by the ceiling. I spent the whole night in this position, dressed in my house clothes, windows wide open. The cold and that position has stretched my leg to an extent that even a year later, I am still limping. My eyes were tied and I didn’t see what they were doing, but my hearing compensated for the lack of sight. A festival of gunshots, one after another, the whistle of bullets, loud, flew out from the muzzle. Russians were shooting from the second floor of the house that stands not even two meters away from the street where the convoy was shot. The windows allowed them to see the beginning and the end of the street from both sides. From such a small distance they sent dozens and dozens of bullets, hand grenades, I heard people scream in pain and fear, and then I heard silence. In the room where I was hung, I heard Russians discuss their shots. “Hooray!”, “I got two!”, “We got a nice ambush here!” The fear I have experienced those days I will never be able to describe. I am a grown man, but remembering that makes me tremble and feel that fear over and over again.
On the 8th of March, Russians left their hub and let me out. The town was still occupied, but as I understand now, they progressed further towards Kyiv and sent more of their troops that way. Only two days after the massacre I finally saw what had happened. A long street full of blood, broken glass, dead bodies, shot down and burned cars, some of those cars had the note “children” on them. That day I buried seven people. Bury is a big word though. Some people I covered with cloth, some people I pulled away from the street. Russians were still in town and I was afraid to be next.
A lot of people died in Stoyanka during that month. Young women, women of the age of my mother, I cannot think about it without crying. No time will ever heal me, and I am sure I am not the only one. I lived through the occupation once, and now it will live in me for the rest of my life. All I want today is justice for those criminals. After the occupation, I identified five of the occupants that were holding me in their hub. One of their soldiers took a picture of himself with a children’s camera, looted from one of the houses. He left it behind, but I found it and gave it to the police. I know my occupants’ names and I know that three of them I have already outlived, but I believe death is not enough justice, they should be punished in prison.