From 3 March until 31 March 2022, the Russian Armed Forces advancing into Ukraine over the Russian and Belarusian borders north of Ukraine halted their advance towards the northern Ukrainianian city of Chernihiv in a village called Yahidne, 15 kilometres outside the centre of Chernihiv.
The Russian soldiers forced the entire population of Yahidne, about 300 people, into a basement of abour 120 metres squared underneath a school, and kept them there for the duration of the occupation.
Of the three hundred people incarcerated, it is estimated that about 60 were children. Mobile telephones were prohibited; Russian soldiers threatened anyone found with one with execution. The people in the cellar, cramped together in intolerable conditions in which they had less than half a square metre each for almost four weeks, were told that Ukraine's President Zelenskiy had fallen and that Vladimir Putin had now taken over Ukraine. They had no access to information from the outside world, and lived in conditions on unbearable squalor, with no running water, no draining, no access to toilet facilities and no access to light. They were forced to sit in the dark, surviving on the minimal moldy rations the Russians afforded them.
We were today given a tour of the basement by one of the people who was incarcerated there together with his wife and ten year old daughter. All the people incarcerated there were civilians. The rationale for incarcerating the entire population in the basement was apparently that the Russians were using Yahdine as a military staging point for an assault on Chernihiv. Ultimately that assault was resisted in street fighting in the villages outside Chernihiv, many of which were completely destroyed.
About ten people died inside the basement, simply due to malnutrition or because their bodies could not survive the hot, steamy, humid, unsanitory conditions. One resident of the basement was taken out and shot because a journalist's ID was found on him. At one point two men not from the village were thrown into the basement. They were then removed for interrogation, put back in the basement, then taken out later and shot dead. Their shallow graves were found in the forests next to the school.
The Russians would let a handful of sick individuals out of the basement for short periods for fresh air from time to time, then order them back in. The residents of the basement had no idea for how long they would be there. When people died inside the basement, they would have to wait until the next morning when the Russians opened the basement to remove the corpses. The Russians would order some of the villagers to bury the corpses, and in some cases they would execute the people digging the shallow graves.
The names of the dead would be inscribed on the walls by the residents of the basement. Primitive calendars were written on the walls so the residents knew how long they had been there. Children would be encouraged to draw pictures on the walls of the basement, to entertain themselves.
When the Russians ultimately retreated and the basement was liberated, the village of Yahidne had been almost completely destroyed. Houses have since been rebuilt using community efforts and government funds in Ukraine, and only journalists are allowed into the village. There are efforts underway to preserve the building and the basement, and to maintain it as a monument to Russian brutality.
None of the Russian soldiers responsible for this atrocitity have been arrested or brought to justice.
Below we show a photo gallery of Yahidne, the memorial being created, and images from the basement itself which remains substantially the same as the condition it was in when it was liberated - save that lights have been added.
See also here for a range of videos about the destruction at Yahidne: