Shreds had also destroyed the wooden cottage. It was a birthday present from her late husband Nikolai, Muzyra explained. “We do not understand why the Russians did this. We are a small quiet country. “If it were not for our president, I do not know what we would do,” he added, throwing broken branches and other rubbish into a spring fire. Galina Muzyra cleans debris in her garden in Zalissya on Saturday. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk / The Guardian Muzyra and her son Denis live in Zalissya, a village on the highway between the capital Kiev and the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv. For 20 days, between March 8 and 28, Russian troops occupied her home, sleeping on top of her kitchen stove. The property survived better than many others. The house next door is a charred, homeless shell. A burnt Lada sat in his yard, next to a ruined vine pergola. In all the areas evacuated by the Russian armed forces, a major clean-up was underway. Homeowners were sorting out and calculating the cost of a catastrophic one month occupation. Ukrainian army swordsmen collected ammunition they left behind and defused mines – a huge work in progress. They swept the Muzyra garden where a rocket landed between daffodils and a blossoming apple tree. Map of Chernihiv A few doors down, street workers from Ukraine’s Dtek energy company were busy restoring electricity. “We are trying to help people,” one shouted, speaking from the top of a broken pole. The Russian invasion left 1.5 million Ukrainians without electricity. Emergency crews have recently reconnected more than 980,000 households to the network, the company said. Further north in Chernihiv, residents were celebrating Easter after a traumatic 25-day siege. Russian forces advancing from Belarus bombed the city. Many hundreds of people died. A few shells fell in front of St. Catherine’s Church with a golden dome of Chernihiv, one of a series of ancient buildings dating back to Kyivan Rus, the original medieval dynasty of Ukraine. Believers carrying willow branches on Palm Sunday were crucified inside the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the 11th century, where an Orthodox service was in progress. Others enjoyed worldly pleasures. Vyacheslav Radchenko and his wife, Marina, were fishing on the banks of the picturesque Dessna River in Chernihiv. From above, pedestrians and cyclists crossed the damaged and only surviving bridge of the city. Vyacheslav Radchenko and his wife, Marina, went fishing on the Desna River in Chernihiv at the weekend. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk / The Guardian “This is the first time we have been fishing for six weeks since the war started,” Marina said. “It was a terrible moment. The worst moment was when we were bombed by Russian warplanes. My hair turned white. But we are optimistic. Life goes on.” Vyacheslav said the city’s internet and electricity supply were back, but there was a shortage of glass to repair broken windows and a lot of damage. More difficult to fix was the city’s relations with Belarus, whose president, Alexander Lukashenko, facilitated Vladimir Putin’s attempt to seize Kyiv and overthrow his government. Belarusians came to Chernihiv to go shopping, Vyacheslav said. He hoped to catch sea bream and cockroaches, he added, but so far he had no luck. “Our biggest fear is that the Russians will return,” he admitted. In his last video speech, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pledged to modernize urban areas devastated by Russia. Finding temporary housing for citizens who were forced to flee their homes was a priority, he said. They will be given money or materials for reconstruction, with the plan then extended to all affected cities and communities. Veterans and government employees will be housing priorities, he said. Outside of Chernihiv, the multi-year scale of this ambitious project was noisy. The road to the south passed through matches that looked like matchsticks, sliced by Russian missiles. Many bridges had been blown up. Enemy-armed vehicles destroyed in a Ukrainian counterattack had swept the road. One was marked with the letter “O”, the symbol of the attack in Chernihiv, Russia. One of the many Russian tanks that pollute communities on the road between Kiev and Chernihiv. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk / The Guardian In the village of Ivankiva most of the houses were destroyed, like by a tornado. A resident, Julia – who declined to give her name – said Russian soldiers had killed her brother-in-law and neighbor, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. The soldiers lived in her house for 25 days, she said, occupying her bedroom. She and her 13-year-old son, Zeniya, slept next to the basement with the candles. “I asked them why they had come here. I was told, “We are here to free you from your government and from NATO.” “I explained that we voted for our government every five years and we did not need to be released,” said Julia. “We were told we lived in an elite village, which is a bit hilarious. “I’m not sure they saw the right way.” Julia said the soldiers stole most of her belongings, including her son’s mountain bike. They confiscated her husband’s cell phone and shot him. After the Russians left, the family repaired their windows with plastic sheets and plywood. Repairing the holes left by the bullets would take money they did not have, he said, adding: “What happened here was a terrible dream.” In the village church, the priest Georgi Petrosuk was preparing for his first prayer after the occupation. He said a group of volunteers had cleared up. He hoped to complete the dusting in time for Easter, he added, as he frantically wiped pictures and images of the holy family with a damp cloth. Someone had peppered the building with machine gun bullets. His parishioners had installed a new door, he said. Georgy Petrosuk describes the cleaning business in his church before Easter. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk / The Guardian Below, the neighboring settlement of Yahidne was in a deplorable state. Russian units had seized most of the property, marking it with a V. Several hundred people had gathered at gunpoint in the basement of the village school. There was a little oxygen. Eleven people, including a 13-year-old girl, died there, amid drowning in the dark. The medical examiners had parked outside on Sunday. A resident, Nina Alexeevna, said she had spent an entire week clearing the chaos left by the soldiers occupying her home. They had occupied the neighbor’s apartment who had not yet returned. Alexeevna showed the bedrooms and the kitchen – a wild patchwork of clothes, overturned drawers and scattered books. “This is Ruski Mir,” she said ironically, referring to the idea of a Russian-speaking cultural world dominated by the Kremlin. Nina Alexevena spent a week clearing the chaos caused by the Russian occupation soldiers. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk / The Guardian Alexeevna said that her “soul” felt better after her epic cleansing. There were some other signs of normalcy. On the neighboring street, Katia Balanovich had tidied up and dug her large garden, which had previously been drowned by a Russian tank. He was burning corn straws preparing for the summer growing season. “I will sow carrots and tomatoes,” he said. In the midst of horror and large-scale vandalism there was a symbolic return. The white stork, the national bird of Ukraine, had settled as usual along the road used by the Russians in their unsuccessful and revealing advance towards Kyiv. Several storks sat in giant nests, built on telegraph poles. One climbed high above the trunk of a Russian armored vehicle.
