The snake left

As the village of Makarov near Kyiv returns to life after occupation. Report of Taisiya Bekbulatova

In the village of Makarov, which is located in the Buchansky district of the Kyiv region, more than ten thousand people lived in Ukraine before Russia's invasion of Russia. In 1941-1943, Makarov survived the German occupation. At the end of February, Russian troops entered here - and remained in the village for about a month. According to the Ukrainian authorities, at least 132 people died during this time. Now the village is trying to return back to a peaceful life: those who survived return home, clean their yards, count losses and mourn those who died. Taisiya Bekbulatova talks about what is happening in Makarov.

Corridor to the Queen

On March 11, at half a day in the morning at the gates of the house of Grigory Chmyr in Makarov - a calm town 50 kilometers from Kyiv - the Russian military appeared.

By that time, Makarov had been occupied for more than two weeks. There were less than a thousand civilians in the village. The house of the daughter of 72-year-old Chmyr was fired from the tank (fortunately, she had already left by that time). On the eve of March 10, there was a shelling, and two mines flew to the street where Chmyr himself lived. One landed right at his house. The other is next to the house of his neighbors: there was one of Chmyr’s best friends, 61-year-old Oleg Sych, his wife, daughter-in-law Marina and her two children.

There were about 20 people - they had not yet seen their chmyr in Makarov. “Some tall guys, strong,” says the man. - More Buryats, Chechens. They are on foot and four BMPs. They said: “You have two hours for fees, you must leave your residence. If not, we will shoot you.”

Chmyr did not want to leave, but the neighbor with whom they had been living for forty years “lived as one family” persuaded him to go to the Zhytomyr region, where his relatives had his relatives. In one car, Chmyr with his wife Galina and all things were located, in the second - all the inhabitants of the house of Sichi.

The Russians said that it would be safe to go: they will be spent first to Lipovka, a small village ten minutes from Makarov, and then they will be passed along the green corridor to the queen that Ukrainian troops control. In fact, they were allowed to go into Lipovka with difficulty, and they were not allowed into the queen at all. “We stood in Lipovka, our [local] friend Sasha asked:“ Do not go anywhere today, there is where to live. Stay, do not go, I ask you. If you want, tomorrow it will be visible, ”says Chmyr. - And I say to Olezhka - I don’t want to go anywhere, I want to go home. Olezhka says - me too, but they will not let us go home. "

As a result, the neighbors decided that if they were not released from Lipovka before the start of the commandant, they would remain to spend the night with a friend. “And then the Russian drives up in a passenger car and says:“ You are a green corridor to the Queen, ”Chyr continues. He did not start a car in any way, so in a column of 13 cars he was the last. In order for them to be identified as refugees, all those departments were written with white paint on DITI cars, and white leaves were glued to the windows and behind. Passing a checkpoint, the pensioner heard the Russian military pass through the walkie -talkie: "The column has left, the end of communication."

Having passed the forest belt, the column was on the road in the middle of corn fields. At that moment, the first shots were heard. “BMP began to shoot from the first car to the last,” says Chmyr. - My Galinka was sitting on the side, shouting: “Grisha, run away, because four tanks are going on.” Gregory saw how cars began to light up in front of him - along with people inside. He turned and rushed back. According to him, he managed to break through the front wheel, but he was able to get to Lipovka. At the checkpoint, the Russian military, according to the memoirs of a pensioner, met him with a question:

- What's happened?

- They shot the column.

- Who, yours?

- No, yours!

- Where did they shoot? From NALAVIKOVKI?

- No, from Andreevka.

“So ours.” But I said that it is dangerous there.

Maps of the surroundings of Makarov

© Openstreetmap Contributors

According to Grigory Chmyr, several cars that rode at the beginning of the column managed to slip under fire. He hoped that his neighbors were also among them. Later, the pensioner found out that in one of the cars that were tired in front of him there were Oleg Sych with his family - apparently, when leaving, they were a little behind to wait for him. “The fact that Olezhka was burning is personally saw. I just did not expect it to be, ”says Chmyr and begins to cry.

“I cry constantly,” he continues. - 71 years did not cry. My nerves passed something, I cry for three nights. We go to bed - I do not sleep, but cry. Silently cry for myself, and Galka says: I hear well how you cry. "

When the Russians left Lipovka at the end of March, Gregory and Misha's neighbor went bicycles to the place of execution. “I said that I won’t go home until I find it ...”, the pensioner says in a broken voice.

On the spot they saw a bus and five cars. Everyone burned to the ground. The neighbor of the neighbor Chmyr saw right away - it was the only "nine". From the three bodies in it only bones remained. He collected bones found in the car in two packages: one for Oleg, the second for Marina and her 12-year-old son Timofey. The next day, Grigory and Galina buried their neighbors in the garden.

Now forensic scientists work there - they exhumes the remains to investigate war crimes.

Grandfather's head fell

Of the members of the family of Sichi who were traveling to evacuate, two survived. When a shell hit the “nine”, Oleg Valentine’s wife managed to jump out of the car and pull out her grandson, six -year -old Arsen. According to the older brother of the deceased Oleg Sych, Alexander, both of them were wounded by the fragments of the exploding shell, but the woman managed to drag the child on the cuvette to the queen, where they were assisted.

Now Valentina and Arsen in the Zhytomyr region. The boy had fragments at the feet. “[Doctors] they say they will not be taken out so as not to make it worse,” explains 64-year-old Alexander Sych. “You know, I am amazed at him ... I am an old person and I can’t bear it normal.” And he, one might say, [tolerates] steadfastly. " The man recalls how once, when he went to the Zhytomyr region to visit relatives, found Arsen for describing his nine -year -old granddaughter, as his family fell under fire. “He told how he saw [mother, brother and grandfather in a burning car] and could not help them, he was also wounded. Can you imagine? - Alexander cries. “He says: I saw that they were bad and they burn, but I could not help them.” “I wanted to save them, I saw that my grandfather had fallen.”

Despite the fact that they lived in Makarov not far from each other, the last time Alexander and Oleg managed to talk on February 28 - then there was still a connection. “He called, asked how we talked to each other: well, shoot? I say, they shoot, so I'm in the cellar, ”says Alexander. “And he says: I am also in a cellar with children.” Then the connection disappeared.

Oleg Sich in Moscow remained a daughter. She is married to the Russian military. Alexander Sych does not know how she will communicate with her mother and nephew.

Cherry Chkalovskaya

In Makarov there is small rain. A metal plate remaining from the gate of one of the houses claps in the wind. The houses themselves are in the holes from the shells. On some buildings, sheets of paper with the inscriptions “people” or “children” are still hanging. In the village, according to the head of the administration, 40% of the buildings were injured.

The 69-year-old Oleg (he did not call his surname “cold”), a former history teacher, trying to scrape off a black plaque from the ground, which remained in the place where his car was burned. When asked what happened here, he answers: “These are the consequences of the visit of the troops of the Russian Federation to the Makarovsky district.”

The gate in front of his house was crushed by a tank, so the yard is visible from the street. “This is a VAZ-2106 car, he was 34 years old,” a pensioner tells about a burnt car as an old friend. - He ran well, I followed him. I love equipment, it was like a rarity for me. I went to mushrooms on it, bring something to the household. He was like that ... destroyed. "

When Oleg and his wife and dog left the village in early March, their house, from which a good review opened, occupied the Russian military. Their technique stood on the site: deep furrows are still visible on the ground, trenches are dug in the garden. Oleg says that at the time of his departure in the village "it was already hot, fragments fell on his head." “Here were real battles. Have you seen how it torn? Shards destroyed all the trees. This is a pear, and it was a wonderful cherry of Chkalovskaya, ”he shows a damaged tree trunk with a cut off. “Now there are no cherries.”

The military knocked out the locks on the doors and carried everything that seemed useful to them from the house and pantries: charging, batteries, pumps, chainsaws, grinder, wires. “They scooped up the car, beat her daughter, stacked with sledgehammer, merged gasoline. Apparently, they did not have enough fuel, ”says Oleg. He will have to remove traces of the Russian army in his court for a long time.

Cake on birch juice

“I survived. 25 days the dog in the house, grandfather and me, ”says Svetlana Fatyuk. She is one of the few residents who spent all the time of the occupation in Makarov. The tanks on the site of Oleg’s neighbor stood, turning the muzzles to her house. She remembers that his car was burning for a day and black smoke fell from it with a pillar. On the day when the neighbors left, she baked cake on birch juice and soda, because there was no more bread, and gave them half.

Father Fatyuk was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War; According to her, he was buried in Moscow - and he was remembered as part of the Immortal Regiment campaign. When the Russian invasion has just begun, soldiers came to her house to look for Bender. “Russian, such a high machine, instructed. I say: lower my gun, I'm not afraid, I am 82 years old, ”she says. -I ran, ran around the hut around, in all the rooms-and left. "

Svetlana Fatyuk shows her broken window where bullets got. Opposite it in the room is a closet. “Everything is shot: coat, grandfathers, a suit, son of a couple of costumes - everything through,” she says. Then he points to the flowerbed: "Then the bomb exploded."

The pensioner almost proudly says that she and her husband never once hid in the basement for all the time: “They sat in the hut. We have a room, a kitchen, and then another room, a trailer. So we are in the kitchen - there the sofa is so small - we sit down, I have a warm blanket, wrap myself with a blanket, and we sit: we are together and the dog is nearby. ” Lowed early: on March 4, electricity and gas disappeared. “I can’t do without tea,” Svetlana continues. - Grandfather for the hut made a low stove, these little brushes were put so that there was no smoke. It will boil in a saucepan, drink tea. ”

Fatyuk recalls how on March 6 the Russian military unexpectedly came to their house and began to apologize to her. “You see, mother, we were deceived. I [houses in Russia] like this, ”she retells the words of one of them, running her hand at the level of her neck. - I have no light. I was allowed to hold the light only when I gave a subscription that I was going on a business trip to Belarus. Now I called - yes, they connected the lights to me. This [for the first time] in my whole life. Sorry, mother. Today is the sixth day, forgiven Sunday. Sorry. " Fatyuk answered this way: “Guys, I ask one, - so that you return home alive. I am mom, and mothers are also waiting for you at home, go home. ” She sobs. One of her sons is also a military man.

“You know, I am ashamed to say, I'm a duck in life, I love to wash,” she says unexpectedly. - Not washed - I can not fall asleep. And then I did not change clothes for a month. My son had a lower thermal underwear, I put it on the bottom and upstairs and some more pants-and so 25 days. ” When it was all over, the pensioner went to her daughter in the fasts to wash his clothes and swim. “Everything is in soot, we drowned,” she says. - I came to the bathroom, took a washcloth ... Black washcloth. I say, Natasha, throw it away, I am ashamed that such a washcloth is after me. I didn’t wash for a month, I didn’t have this in my life. ” Svetlana closes her mouth with a collar of jacket, trying to calm sobs.

“I called this farm all - a quiet backwater. We were not afraid of anyone, we always had everything open, opened the gate and went in, ”she continues. - And yesterday [neighbors] came - we went out of the gate the second or third time. I [now] do not go out, I'm afraid. While I am at home, I do something in the garden-I forget. As soon as I went into the hut, so ... I don’t cry, it itself is crying, because we have even less grief than others. ”

Fatyuk says that a young man, Sasha Olkhovts, was killed in a nearby house - he stood up for his wife, who wanted to rape the Russian military. The police of the Kyiv region confirmed the fact of the murder of the military for the murder of the military. In total, 132 people were killed in the Makarov community, according to the authorities.

Another neighbor who left the village had a pig in the house. “The back, the spatula was chopped off and everything was left in the hut. The chickens were chopped too, ”says Fatyuk. “He says: stinking, my God.”

One day, the pensioner was surprised to see a military man on the street, which was strangely ate orange. “Not only are they hungry, they did not see civilization, they do not understand what the toilet is ... They do not understand how oranges are! They eat with a skin like an apple, ”she says. - Well, savagery, wildness to look at it all. The toilets took off. The neighbor said: Lenkins bought panties. "

The pensioner recalls that three days before Makarov’s release, “there were terrible battles-and shells back and forth, fly back and forth.” “There was still such [the military was], he shot both day and night. There he stood there, near the barn. He is so tired of it, this snake, ”she says. -And then [became] quietly, quietly ... I left the hut at 12 o’clock in the garden-no [him]. Grandfather, I say, you know, the serpent has left! Grandfather says: it seems to you. And then my grandfather comes to me and says: you know, mother, I saw two tanks passed with our flags. She waved her hand - I think Grandfather Mirage. And then - ours ... ". When the woman realized that the Russians were really leaving, she "cried with joy before the scream."

“No, don’t forget, this cannot be forgotten,” she says. “We go to bed, it’s already dark at half -eaten,” and Nemchura stand in the eyes. ”