VA few weeks ago, Vasyl Krywenok’s phone rang. Numbers flashed on the screen, which he recognized immediately: it was his own number. Months earlier, Russian soldiers had stolen his mobile phone. Krywenok took off. A Russian answered on the other end. He wanted to apologize and offered 5,000 rubles in compensation – just under 80 euros for the destruction of everything the 72-year-old entrepreneur had built. Kryvenok refused. “There’s nothing left, my shop was destroyed, they wanted to blow up my house.”
Only the walls remain of the house. It smells burnt, there are feathers and dead pigeons in the rubble. Krywenok had three thousand before Russian soldiers occupied his village of Archanhelske in southern Ukraine. Only ten animals survived half the year of occupation. The other pigeons were burned, drowned, shot, eaten. Kryvenok points to the grill on which the Russians cooked the pigeons. A neighbor who took care of the birds after he escaped told him that. She asked the Russians why they kill birds they don’t eat. “We are here to kill,” they are said to have replied. At the end of October, Kryvenok returned after the Ukrainian army liberated the village. He gives up his business, a greengrocer, a kiosk and a café. But he wants to rebuild his house.