"My daughter was killed in front of me, and then I was kept in basement for month". PHOTO
Victoria Kovalenko clearly remembers this moment. "There was an explosion or some shots. I was stunned. The rear window shattered. The husband shouted: get out of the car!"
This was reported ВВС Україна, аs reported by Цензор.НЕТ.
Nine days after the start of the war in Ukraine, Victoria and her husband Petro decided to leave Chernihiv to protect their children. Twelve-year-old Veronica is Victoria's daughter from her first marriage. The youngest daughter, Varvara, is only a year old.
They took their essentials and set off. When they left the outskirts of the city, stones blocked their way near the village of Yahidne. Peter stopped, went out, and began to distract them.
Within seconds, their car came under fire.
"The wreckage cut my head, I was bleeding. My eldest daughter was scared," Victoria recalls.
"Veronica started screaming, her hands were shaking, so I tried to calm her down. She got out of the car, and I followed her. Then I saw her fall. When she came closer, she no longer had a head."
A Russian shell hit the car, a fire broke out.
"I tried to stay calm, holding my younger daughter in my arms. I needed to find a safe place."
She didn't see Peter, but his silence told Victoria that he was also dead.
She ran out of the burning car. The next 24 hours were a desperate attempt to survive.
Victoria and her little Varvara hid in a parked car, but the shooting started again. She ran to a small building where soldiers were stationed. Hiding there, she thought about how to protect herself and her daughter.
The next day, they were found by Russian patrols and taken to the village of Yagidne.
The mother and child spent the next 24 days in the basement of the local school. People were dying in front of Victoria without access to the necessary medical care.
The BBC visited that basement and talked to other people held there by the Russian military. They told how people, especially children, had to stay with the corpses for hours. Sometimes it took several days for the corpses to endure.
According to Victoria, there were 40 people in the room. There was no light, so candles and lighters were used. There was not enough air, it was difficult to breathe. Going to the toilet was almost not allowed, so people were forced to use buckets.
"People were sick because of the lack of movement, they were sitting on chairs, sleeping on chairs. We saw their veins, they were bleeding, so we made bandages," Victoria recalls.
In such circumstances, Victoria had to mentally endure the terrible loss of her husband and eldest daughter. She says she held on as long as she could, focusing on saving the life of her youngest child.
Victoria asked the Russians to bring Peter and Veronica's bodies to school so she could bury them.
She also asked her ex-husband, Veronica's father, to go to the wreckage of the car and take pictures of the remains. But what was left of them was barely recognizable.
There was almost nothing left of the burnt car: pieces of Veronica's burnt clothes, a small bracelet with a heart-shaped pendant, two car license plates bleached from the fire.
Victoria remembers the day when the remains of her husband's and daughter's bodies were brought.
"It was March 12. They called me and said, 'Come on, you'll see where they lie. They were buried in the woods, in two graves. And two crosses with plaques."
"We stayed and started to cover the boxes with earth, but the shelling started, so we ran away, we didn't have time to bury them. It was very scary."
Victoria was asked what she would say to people who did this to her family.
"If I had been given the opportunity to shoot Putin, I would have done it," she said. "My hand would not have trembled."
Now Victoria and Varvara are in Lviv, in relative safety.
The day before this story, she visited a psychologist for the first time. "When I'm with people, when I'm doing something and talking, I forget what happened. But when I'm alone, I'm covered," she says and cries.
She shows a keychain - a cute little ladybug with a heart on its chest. This is a gift from Veronica.
Attached to it is a small gold ring with engraved letters.
"It's from the church, she bought it for me. It's an amulet, I feel like he saved me. He was in my pocket. He was there all this time, protecting me."
