The story of Petro Neshchadym from Moschun
AUTHOR:
Petrov Neshchadym is 62 years old. He and his family had lived in Moschun, Kyiv Oblast for the past 15 years. Now he has moved to Cherkasy, as his house was completely destroyed during the hostilities.
On 24 February, Petro was finishing his shift at work and didn’t really believe that such a cruel and large-scale war would begin. However, when 28 Russian helicopters flew over his house in Moschun, he got really scared. Petro saw these helicopters circling over the Hostomel airfield and firing. He had previously served in aviation himself and related that they were flying very low, about a metre from the tops of the trees.
Petro also saw how Russian military landing party arrived at Hostomel. This landing lasted for about 20 minutes, after which a shootout ensued. Later, the helicopters departed.
During the subsequent days there was continuous shelling. Petro’s daughter and grandchildren were evacuated immediately, while he and his wife remained in Moschun until 6 March. One day, Petro’s house was hit by an enemy shell, leaving everying in pieces and on fire. He managed to put the fire out himself but, once he’d left Moshchun, his house was destroyed.
At first, many people remained in Moschun. The local residents hoped that all this would not last long. However, when Ukrainian military personnel drove a lot of equipment into the village and asked the residents to evacuate, the majority did so.
Petro says that he was left without property due to the Russian invasion: “I evacuated in the trousers, boots and jacket I was wearing, with nothing but my documents.” Everything else he owned that had remained in Moschun had been either looted or destroyed as a result of shelling.
“The Russians smashed through the front door of my house with an axe, shot out the neighbour’s lock, stole all the clothes of my other neighbours, took women’s shoes and anything they could get their hands on. Literally every house was broken into,” Petro explains.
The main thing for Petro, of course, is that he and his relatives are alive. He knows that his neighbour’s mother was very badly wounded in the head and neck and ended up hanging herself. Petro also heard many stories about the dead and missing residents of Moschun.
Petro Neshchadym is now waiting for a faster end to the war. Since he is a builder by profession, he plans to build a new house after Ukraine’s victory. Despite the fact that he and his wife are no longer young and do not earn that much, he has not lost hope for the best and believes that he will be able to start everything from scratch.
This material was created based on testimonies collected by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
These pictures are created by artificial intelligence. They are NOT real. They are illustrations of the stories we tell. Most of these stories could not have been fixed by the camera. At the same time, there is documentary work by hundreds of Ukrainian and international photographers who produce real, and so much painful, documentation of this war. Check photographs by Oleksandr Glyadelov, Maksym Dondiuk, Mstyslav Chernov and Yevhen Malolietka, Andriy Dubchak, Yulia Kochetova, and many others.