Maria Kuraptseva, a journalist with the Dom TV channel’s website, lost her home for the second time. After 2014, she moved from her native Donetsk to Borodyanka, and in March of this year, due to Russian shelling, she had to flee to Germany.
Maria Kuraptseva spoke to Hromadske Radio about her experiences.
«It all began on February 24 in Borodyanka. I was trying to work. Borodyanka is 19 km from Bucha. In the middle of the day on February 26, the Russian military shelled the city, hit a house and killed three people. We went to the bomb shelter. The national guard ran towards us on the street. They told us to get off the street quickly, because Russian tanks are pushing in,” the journalist said.
She stressed that authorities and deputies left the city after February 24.
Soon the rsidents of Borodyanka began to see Russian tanks. They had a white letter V painted on them and passed by houses, kindergartens, schools.
«We spent the night in a bomb shelter. On February 27, tired national guardsmen came to us and said that there were terrible battles in Gostomel. We heard the sounds of heavy artillery. Everything was shaking, loud booms. Fear stuck in our throats. Taxi drivers and others familiar with the area did not know how to get us out this ring of fire,” said Kuraptseva sharing her unpleasant memories.
On March 1, when they came out of the shelter to see what had happened, they could not recognize their hometown. Everything was burning.
«Teenagers and men carried products from the broken “ATB” as bombs and shells fell overhead. People used their cars to transport drinking water to shelters. Enemy planes arrived the same day. Two houses were destroyed, shops were smashed. Those who did not make it to the shelter were killed by Russians rockets and bombs,” the journalist added.
On March 4, she managed to leave Borodyanka.
In Kherson russian occupiers kidnap and torture dozens of people
russian military deported 615,000 Ukrainians to russia, 121,000 of them children