Boghdanivka is a small farming village on the road north of Kyiv to Chernihiv, east of the Dnipro River.
For many weeks in March and April, it was occupied by Russian soldiers as they tried to advance towards the capital Kyiv, before retreating, defeated.
They left behind memories of unbridled depravity, torture, and families desperately searching for news of missing loved ones.
This is the story of Boghdanivka, but it could be the countless peoples of Ukraine where lives have changed during 100 days of war.
“He loaded his machine gun and said, ‘Now we’re going to kill you.'”
Alexander, who is not his real name, has hidden the clothes he was wearing the night the Russians came looking for him; guards it as evidence of war crimes.
He shows us his blood-stained tracksuit pants, where he was nailed to his knee. And the cloth used to tie his hands to his back. He still has scars on his face from where a cigarette was put out.
“He (a soldier) hit me on the head with the handle of a knife. He kicked me in the back. Then he put his hands on the table and hit them three times with his butt. “A machine gun. My arm was already badly bent. I understood it was a fracture.” You’re a Nazi. Where are the Nazis hiding? “
“He kept saying ‘you’re an animal’ and ‘I’ll cut you something.’ He pulled out a knife, pressed it to my stomach, and said, ‘I’ll cut your penis so you don’t reproduce. about five people hit me on all sides.
“I was hit so hard that something cracked in my head and I fell to the ground and my foot slipped in my blood. They said, ‘Get up, or we’ll cut your leg tendons.’ .
“He kept his foot on my leg to break it. I got up and sat down in a chair. I didn’t understand anything anymore. I was lost. I didn’t speak well, my nose was broken. Then he asked me. ‘ you? ‘ I say no.
“And he turned off my cheekbone. Then he said to me, ‘Take this animal out, cover it all with blood.’
Image: Aleksandr has scars on his face where Russian soldiers in Boghdanivka tortured him with cigarettes
“They grabbed me and led me down the stairs to the cellar. They put me in a plastic chair. They said, ‘Wait, let’s come and kill you.’
“Then he goes down and says, ‘I’m a maniac, I’ll cut you off.’
“He came down and started hitting me with his fists, the handle of a knife. Then he grabbed my ear and cut it a little. Then in the morning he loaded his machine gun and said, ‘Now you we will kill. ‘
Russian soldiers smeared their own excrement on the walls
The village school is just around the corner. What’s left.
When Russian troops occupied the village, the school was used as the main base. It is now a burnt shell, completely ruined. There are mattresses on the floors where Russian soldiers slept and half-empty bottles of alcohol.
Read more: 100 days of war in Ukraine: the devastating consequences of Putin’s invasion
There is a calendar in the math classroom that marks the day they arrived and the day they left – and next to it a message written in English.
As a final insult they smeared their own excrement on the walls and then bombarded the place as they retreated.
“We knew they were here, they lived here, but I didn’t think that adults, who could also have children, could do it,” the director told us.
“We thought they would live here, build and move out of here. But what they did was horrible. It cost me, it was hard for the children. The children cried when they saw that the nursery had burned down. “.
Russian soldiers went from house to house, marking the doors in front of people.
Image: Yulia Vasylenko’s husband has been missing since Russian forces took him from Boghdanivka
Like everyone else, Yulia Vasylenko knocked on the door: she is married to the village policeman, Viacheslav.
He was taken away that day and has not been seen since.
“Five soldiers came,” he says.
“Two in the house and three were waiting on the street. They told my husband to put his hands on his back and then they grabbed him. We haven’t seen him since and we don’t know anything about him. he is in prison: we need him alive, we miss him. “
She believes she may have been betrayed by a traitor.
“They took him away and beat him up for sure,” he says.
“He was betrayed. 100% delivered by someone. They knew exactly who he was and where we lived.”
These are the stories of a single Ukrainian people.
Men, women and children whose lives and future have been irrevocably changed and damaged.