Our correspondent spent several hours in the former rich village near Kharkov, from where the Russian World was knocked out

Circulars were under Russian occupation from February 24 to May 7. We got there on the fifth day after the liberation of the village by Ukrainian troops. From February to May, the comps played the role of a supporting point for tank attacks on Kharkov and artillery shelling of the most affected microdistrict, Northern Saltovka. For the above reasons, to rural residents, so as not to chatter, it was not allowed to travel towards the territories controlled by Ukraine - only to Belgorod.

“Well, try to look for someone on Gogol Street,” the military man at the checkpoint with a dark face with fatigue indicated his nod to the side of the extreme house. - Just do not climb anywhere, has not yet been cleared. And shoot. And people are hiding in the cellars.

The military was only partly right. In the distance, Bahalo is deafly. But on the bench by the fence of the fraud of brick, the six -year -old Lisa, her mother Vika, her mother, familiar Uncle Slavik and Lizin, was breathing air. Lisa held in her hands a notebook written in printed letters: preparing for school. About the most important in recent months - “Slavik. Є izhi і mina. Sabaki ” (“ Slavik. There is food and mine. Dog ” - Ukr. ) - Lisa reported right on the cover. Mom Vika managed to get a loaf of bread, and not only for her family, but also to take the elderly, there are at least twenty of them. For the war of bedridden and lonely, it was added.

Judging by the telephone dialogue that Vika assertively led with one of those who could “solve issues”, she had weight here:

- I submitted the list - there is still no result!

- Understood. Now we will call, we recall, - the interlocutor made excuses.

- Come on, my good! - Vika encouraged, and already addressing us, she continued without the transition:

- Look: a lot of circuses have left, but a lot is left. The humanitarian, which is still from Belgorod, that is, the last pasta, we handed out so as not to starve. New - "Come with a wheelbarrow!" - They still promise ...

“We don’t need to handle ourselves,” Slavik grabbed about forty-five, looking at Vika with adoration. “But no one gets to the end of the village at all.”

- The day before yesterday, do you know what we yelled here? "Ambulance", "ambulance"! Well, where is the ambulance?

The neighbor has a through wound, bleeding. The military came running, just bandaged. Yesterday they already buried, ”Vika continued.

“Also, we almost ...” the “fresh” fragment threw her foot away from the shop with Lisa.

-The 150th caliber flew to the neighbors in the garden. Want to see? - suggested Slavik. - And nearby a full garage of explosives. From these remained ... a couple of meters left and all the kapets is large. Just a miracle that carried it.

- We sang "The Virgin, Virgo, Rejoice!" - Vika specified the true reason for the miraculous salvation. - And you guys, who are volunteers?

A lawyer-political scientist brought us to the circuses. Kharkov civilian activists handed over the request along the chain, “their own”, Alexei responded. After another colleague, an employee of the Ukrainian Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security Dmitry Galko, a political officer from Belarus, has long been hunting Lukashenko’s regime. In general, Dmitry (philosophical education, working English) by the genus of classes now should be in the office evacuated from the capital, in Lviv, to write analytics, and not to dangle in the frontline zone. Photocor-freelance George twenty years old, in the “World”, a student at the Faculty of Journalism Georgy Ivanchenko, on the eve of an online statement with the teacher: “Do you take off the war? This is not a reason to ignore the theoretical course if you want to become a professional! "

“Yes, volunteers,” agreed Alexey, Dmitry and George.

- Let Ukraine even shoot me! - exclaimed Vika. - You can write down: so I loved her, but now I hate it. We went to bed with Lisa on the twenty -third of February, at five in the morning they woke up, like in the refrigerator: no warmth, no light, no gas - nothing. Continuous roar. And the column of Russian tanks rushes past the windows, like along the red carpet on a green light. Not a single politician, not a single deputy! Threw, handed over without a fight! They didn’t even warn about the war!

In Ukraine, it is customary to scold the authorities from top to bottom especially violently in the presence of a journalist. It’s hard to imagine the Russian layman.

“I have a family in Mariupol,” said Dmitry. - And there are also questions to the authorities.

Vika gasped:

- In Mariupol? ..

And turned off the offensive. She reported that she had the opportunity to evacuate from the first day, but from what on earth to flee from her home to some Russia.

- Did the Russians suggest?

- Yes, what are they Russians, Donetsk and Lugansk stood here! “We were miners, took from the shift, gave two“ Mivins ”( vermichel of instant preparation- approx. Ed. ), We sent it to the exercises, it turned out to be for war,” one of the recent interlocutors pierced. And then she added that she stands for justice:

- They did not offend the village only because they themselves are the miners. I personally put crosses on these warriors, forced me to read “Our Father”. They did not mock, did not marast at, at least someone ask. They even gave rations ... And ours now call them a separatist! - again raised her voice. The other day I walked with my daughter past the Ukrainian checkpoint, heard a mat, made a remark.

- And it rushed: “Close e ..., separatist! I went to ...! "

Lisa readily shut her ears: an adult conversation began.

Slavik and Viki were followed by stories where not miners appeared, but “real” Russian military, not alien, they say, nobility. “One grandmother, when the humanitarian was handed out and the“ arrival ”happened, the explosion torn off her legs. So she was immediately sent to Liptsy ( the village was eighteen kilometers from the circuses, still under the occupation, O.M. ) and operated on. ” The fact that the grandmother lived here without war, in abundance and with her feet, followed by default. A certain officer generally admitted to Victoria that he “served as the devil”, but then he allocated the car - to take it to a local temple, turned into a center for the distribution of help, clothes and products:

-Everyone pulled there, from the diapers, the scalp to the potatoes, so that there were no big victims. A five -year -old child stopped talking from stress, can you imagine?

- Did the circus go strongly? I specified.

Vika fell silent and looked at me like a fool for a minute or two:

- I stood upstairs the whole war. It flies away, but I think I’m writing down on the phone, and I’m calling to Kharkov to quickly convey: “Hide! Forty charges! " My mother lives on the already ( Street named after Natalia, the Ukrainian Soviet actress - OM ), they have two [firing] points there, next to the houses. And so: fire, fire, fire! Then silence ... And then the answer flies here ...

- Our groundwater is close. Few cellar dug up normal. In the houses, basically, they waited for: to carry it or not, - added Slavik.

The destruction of the “fascist” Kharkov from the circuses with the hands of the hands of the mobilized from Donetsk and Lugansk looked like part of the Russian military-political strategy-if it is not possible to kill Ukraine as a state, then at least leave the civil war as a keepsake. The “real” Russians settled separately, in the capital bunker of the Ukrainian part of the air defense immediately behind the village.

"Russian steel" and "diplomat"

Accompanied by local dogs, we went on. The street of the rich in the center of Gromada, who was rich before, looked like this: cottages, gates with forged - for prestige and beauty! - Tulips and chamomiles, buildings more modest, gardens ... Now other houses in the row resembled destroyed teeth, and on the gates, sung by the “hail”, the inscriptions were whitewashed: “People. Old people. Children".

The first ownerless courtyard defeated the rack, which was stuck at the barn, with two antediluvian berries and an empty bottle of vodka “Russian steel. Front -line ”(on the label, the felt -tip pen is completed“ Victory - the idea of ​​Russians. ”)

In the middle of the next farm there was a box with pouches and helmets of the Soviet pore: on one stencil - “pacifik”, on the other a crooked emoticon. On the terrace, among cans, pots, pots, a smoked teapot and other penny trash, the Red Star newspaper was lying for April 20. The cap-“Afghanka” with a star in the forehead next to the empty bottle from the cologne “diplomat”-who else releases him? - It smelled of a deadly hopelessness. Exactly the same as the "lying" from blankets in the room.

Why wander around the village of strangers, civilian? They reacted to our voices: a curtain on the window jerked there, a gate creaked there. An elderly man, overcoming fear, asked for a cigarette, grunted in response: "How do we live ... do not see - how?"

In the next hut, from the buffet, which now “decorated” the obscene phrase, the Russian tricolor hung. The bookcase was gutted to the ground. They were looking for, apparently, “nurtures” between the pages. Judging by the nature of the literature, the dwelling belonged to medical workers-retirees.

The brochure with the name "urinary incontinence" was especially interested in one of the patients. She was studied at the entrance, and threw it there.

A bunch of shit right on the tables or sofas - such a manner of the Russian Army habitually rolled the places of its stay in Ukraine - I have never seen in the compasses, I won’t lie.

"Nazis" in the basement

The first to feel the danger to the dogs. They turned around, rushed home while we examined the white bust of Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol on the pedestal, surprised: not a scratch! Park benches on both sides are intact! Blinking loudly. Then it whistled, as if they were whipped around the sky, and the invisible spring began to spin, approaching.

- To the ground! -Vika yelled, arising from under the ground. We fell on the asphalt plates in front of someone's closed gate, near the bush of lilacs, and in the meantime, white fireworks began to explode at the top.

“Your mother, what is it?!”

Freenser student George continued to document-write a video. By appointment, it is not difficult to understand how the theoretical information gathered purely from civil defense benefits quickly leaves the heads, and how practice saves life. In the interval between volleys, Victoria ordered “running here!”, Holding the open upcoming gap of the other gates.

He gasped and hissed very close:

- Lighters!

Five steps with kubarim, in a small, cramped basement. Persons in the twilight. Flashlight spot. Dogs, Skul, tried to hide too. Two shops, blankets, shelves with twists: a bottle with pieces of fat, mushrooms, tomatoes. Little Lisa laid her head on my shoulder: “Mom, where are you? Again ... ”Until now, incendiary shells on circuits from the village of Lipts did not beat. But now the compass have become "fascist" ...

Someone sympathized with the driver Alexei: the car remained in the middle of the street. An attempt to go out, to explore the situation, the new pitch and scream stopped:

- The mountain is on!

Everything around was covered with smoke. The pillar of black rose to the right, on the left-gray, burning acid. The fire was also visible on a parallel street. The men rushed behind the shovels to throw the flame with the earth: if the fire was transferred to the house, then the very large kapets, as Slavik put it.

We found out that we were visiting Baba Pasha. She has a round face, shortness of breath, swollen legs in slippers - nothing else comes in.

- What is there in the capital? Are they bomb too? - asked Baba Pasha and cried. - They mock us ... Insulin is very necessary ...

To get insulin without a recipe for a private person is almost impossible now. That is, even more complicated than gasoline. The husband of Baba Pasha boiled on a soldering lamp - there is no gas for a long time! - kettle. The lighters no longer flew.

They said goodbye rapidly, under the crushed "tea?" In Kharkov, it was necessary to have time until the commandant. It seems not far, but on the road are funnels, concrete blocks, burned Russian equipment. And bright green fields on the sides. In the afternoon it was clear how they were sown with shells.

- You won’t forget about insulin, children? - Baba Pasha told us in the back.

Kharkov region

Over the next day, I only managed to get to Kyiv. Dmitry and George during the same time collected money on the card, found a car again, bought more than thirty loaf of bread, took out a 50-liter gas cylinder, insulin, not counting canned foods and Power-banks, and took him to the compasses. George shot a new video. Now mortars hit the village.