Picture and text by Volodymyr Petrov:
Ihor Mozhaev holds a special chair of his handicapped daughter Maria (12) who died under the rubble of his house in Markhalivka, near Kyiv, on March 5, 2022.
On March 4 he was lying on his bed when, close to 15:00, an airstrike demolished his home and buried him under rubble. Luckily, neighbours came quickly and dug him out as well as his two grandchildren – aged 7 and 8 years old.
Unfortunately though, his wife, mother-in-law, daughter, and three other relatives and friends of the family died on the spot.
Kyiv, March 8, 2022.
Picture and text by Volodymyr Petrov:
Mykola Matsyshyn, 32, arrived at the train station with his wife, Anna, 32, and their nearly 4-year-old daughter, Lidia. Their tickets to Ivano-Frankivsk – a western Ukrainian town – were for five days ago. They couldn’t come to the station on that date because there were no taxis operating in their northwest enclave of Kyiv due to bombings and fighting nearby – and they don’t own a car.
“It was my mistake we didn’t leave the first day,” said Matsyshyn, a software developer.
By Wednesday, the fighting was less than five miles away from their house, so they decided to flee immediately. They carried two small bags and two backpacks.
Friends drove them to the station, they said.
“Lidia was scared,” Anna said.
“We saw rockets in the sky. I took her and we ran to the bathroom. There were some explosions nearby. It was terrifying.”
If they stayed in Kyiv, she added, “I don’t want to guess what the Russians would do to us.”
“I believe Kyiv can look like Kharkiv soon,” Matsyshyn said.
“Now, it’s time to go,” she said.
Kyiv, March 2, 2022.
Picture and text by Volodymyr Petrov:
A machine-gunned bus where several people died in an ambush is photographed days after in the city of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 4, 2022.
Picture and text by Volodymyr Petrov:
Oksana Shlonska, widow of Volodymyr Nezhenets – a Ukrainian soldier who was killed on the February 27 – sits in a car alongside her husband’s coffin before his burial on March 4, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine.
They weren’t able to make an autopsy and bury him sooner because morgues are overloaded. Some families even have to keep bodies at home due to the lack of space. Even after the autopsy, they couldn’t arrange a burial in time due to constant shelling of the cemetery.
Volodymyr Nezhenets already fought in 2014, then retired to become a pedo-psychologist. He however joined back the Ukrainian army on the first day of the Russia’s full scale attack on Ukraine to defend his motherland.
Volodymyr was 54, had 3 sons and was soon to become a grandfather.
He was really looking forward to it…
Picture and text by Volodymyr Petrov:
People are sitting inside a #subway station in downtown #Kyiv on February 24, 2022.
Kyiv subway stations turned into bomb #shelters since the start of #Russia‘s “military operation” which is in fact full-scale war against Ukraine.
