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Located 40 kilometers northwest of Kyiv, this quiet little town was heavily bombed. Rescuers estimate that the many ruins hide many victims and the authorities fear a catastrophic human toll.
Usually, between the marshes and the forests of Polesie, when spring returns, the storks point the tip of their beaks and install their nests at the top of the trees or the pylons, in passing villages which hold both town and village. The circle of life. Borodyanka, population 13,000, even put the wader on its coat of arms. But on Wednesday, the nests are empty. Decapitated trees. Crows resound their mournful song in the cold air of the end of winter. This year, in March, firebirds sowed death in Borodyanka.
From the first hours of the war, on February 24, the city was bombarded, not because of the presence of major military objectives, but because of its strategic location: a stone’s throw from the capital, very close to Belarus, but also on the Kyiv-Korosten main road, the second axis that connects Kyiv to Poland. It is also through there that passed the famous Russian armored column 70 kilometers long, which was to break through the western defenses of the capital.
“The great Russian convoy met our defenders, who stopped them here with a fierce battle, only the Russian planes kept dropping bombs, from the first day, and the city was taken 100%” by the Kremlin, explains Anton Herashchenko, the very media special adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior since 2014, walking in the streets of Borodyanka. “From the start of the offensive, continued…