The story of Vitaliy Lysyi from Borodyanka, Kyiv Oblast, who survived the occupation of his village
AUTHOR:
On the first day of the war, Vitaliy received a call from his mother, who worked as a concierge in Kyiv, and said that she couldn’t leave the capital. Vitaliy went to get her, and when they returned around 6 PM, there were already explosions in the Hostomel area. Borodyanka itself was still quiet.
In a few days, a great deal of Russian military equipment began driving down the district road and through the center of Borodyanka. Then airstrikes began, so Vitaliy’s wife, mother and son moved to his father-in-law’s place in a nearby village.
Since Vitaliy lives in a house, he took people with children from high-rise buildings to his basement. Later, they were evacuated from Borodyanka. Vitaliy himself remained in the village for the entire occupation.
At first, the Russian occupiers came to Vitaliy’s home to check the documents. At that time, they didn’t particularly bother him, only examining the house and telling him to hang a white rag on his house and write "People live here" on the fence.
On March 15, the Russian military came to Vitaliy again and began to ask about local partisans, and about where they were getting ammunition. The Russians thoroughly searched Vitaliy’s house, barn, and basement. They turned everything upside down. On March 16, Vitaliy was forcibly taken from home.
Vitaliy was taken to an unknown place (the occupiers put a black bag on his head) and kept him in a garage for two and a half days. Vitaliy was handcuffed and tied to a chair with tape. They terrorized him by firing a gun between his legs and near his ears, as well as kicking him and tasing him. The most frightening thing for Vitaliy was when the Russians put a bag on his head and tightened a string around his neck.
After being tortured, the exhausted Vitaliy was put in a car and taken back to the village. He was dropped off at a place he knew, so he walked from there in the direction of his home. Of course, it was difficult for Vitaliy to move after almost three days tied to a chair in that garage, but he still managed to get home.
On the way, he saw Russian soldiers, either drunk or high, driving around the village on cars and motorcycles, behaving atrociously. When Vitaliy came home, he saw that his door, windows, and boiler had been shot through, and the tires on his car were slashed. Then he noticed that the occupiers had stolen his mobile phone, flash drives, bed sheets, and various tools from the garage.
Many people died in Borodyanka as a result of the Russian bombings. Vitaliy, in particular, lost four friends. He also recounted a story about a man who was killed just riding his bicycle home. At the end of the street where Vitaliy lives, a man was shot because he went outside after 10:00 p.m.
Until February 24, Vitaliy didn’t believe that this terrible full-scale war could happen. Even when convoys of Russian vehicles were driving nearby, he still didn’t believe it.
Now Vitaliy hates Russians: "I can't even listen to their songs. They are non-human to me. Why did they do such a thing in Bucha, Irpin... Why? How many people were killed? For what? For that stupid Putin?”
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.