Mykhailo Yatsentiuk, an electrician in his 60s, was fetching tea for his three-year-old granddaughter when the bomb fell, burying his family in the basement of their block of flats. His wife, mother-in-law, daughter, son-in-law and three grandchildren were trapped by the rune along with dozens of neighbors. Between 44 and 54 people died. A 15-meter-wide hole today recalls that fateful March 9, 2022, when Russian troops tried to occupy the strategic Izium, in the eastern Kharkiv region.
The five-story building was located on the east bank of the Donets River, in an area of ??the city center that had been suffering from heavy fighting and Russian shelling for days. But on the day of the attack there was no presence of Ukrainian forces in the bloc, according to an investigation by Human Rights Watch (HRW). “Generations of families were buried in the basement by this single attack,” laments the senior crisis and conflict researcher of this NGO Richard Weir. “We found no evidence to justify treating the apartment building as a legitimate military target, nor that the Russian forces tried to avoid or minimize the destruction of so many civilian lives,” he adds.
Russian forces took full control of the city at the end of March and held it and its surroundings for almost six months. During the Russian occupation and outside of Izium, little was known about the attack that destroyed 2 Pershotravneva Street until Ukrainian forces retook control of the area in September.
The organization, whose investigators traveled to the site in September and earlier this month, was unable to identify the type of weapon used during the attack, but the extent of the destruction reveals that it was an air-dropped bomb with delayed detonation, therefore which probably exploded after entering the building.
Due to the hostilities, the emergency services could not start the rescue work until the end of March, first with their hands and then with machinery provided by the Russian forces, which already dominated the city. They were pulling bodies for a month. The human rights commissioner of the Ukrainian parliament, Dmytro Lubinets, reported 54 victims. But HRW was only able to identify 44 people, based on witness interviews.
Among the lives lost, there are also those of Olena and Dimitro Stolpakov, a thirty-year-old couple who were taking refuge in the basement, along with their daughters, Olesia and Elena, aged 5 and 8 respectively; Olena’s parents, her younger sister and her grandmother, as reported by the Ukrainian outlet Fakty. The Stolpakovs were found in a mass grave of more than 400 people found by Ukrainian troops after retaking the city during the late-summer counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region. “They suffocated under the rubble. The exit from the basement was blocked and people couldn’t get out,” laments a classmate of Olena’s to this Ukrainian outlet.
The story of the Stolpakovs was controversial because the Russian embassy in South Africa questioned whether the people buried in the grave had been murdered by the Russians, as claimed by the Ukrainian authorities, because their grave showed March 9 as the date of death. but at that time the Moscow troops still did not control the city.
The bombardment of 2 Pershotravneva Street is proof that the Russians left a trail of deaths with their continuous attacks before occupying the city of 45,000 inhabitants. Similar graves have been found in Mariupol or Bucha, with hundreds of bodies believed to have been buried during the Russian occupation after being found under the rubble.
“Under international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, the parties involved must always distinguish between combatants and civilians, and only target military targets. They must also provide effective advance warning of attacks”, emphasizes HRW in its report.
A relative remembers near the building split in two that his cousin, his wife and aunt, also died. “A victim was found between the second and third floors, and my aunt, between the first and third floors. They told me that she could have tried to run away, but she did not succeed, ”laments the man in statements to this American NGO dedicated to human rights.
Yatsentiuk survived, but for weeks he was a living dead. He was “lost”, he assures. “Aryna Kravchenko – the granddaughter who asked for the tea that saved her life – is my guardian angel.”
