Borodanka, Ukraine – A few days after Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a 500-kilometer high explosive bomb fell from a fighter plane, causing part of Maria Vasilenko’s apartment to collapse.
On March 1, 2022, the attack levelled or damaged dozens of more homes in this former town, 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Kiev, Vasilenko and her neighbors were hiding in an ice-cold basement.
They rushed outside to see how the heat waves transformed the air with blue melting snow and ignited cars, leafless trees and frozen grass around the building.
“Have you ever seen hell? Vasilenko, 80, told Al Jazeera.
Confused and deaf, she was unable to find her daughter Olena, her daughter, and her son-in-law, Serei Kufro, a 37-year-old construction worker.
Their crushed bodies remained in the flooded basement, and Vasilenko was evacuated to central Ukraine along with her young children, Milena and Bodan.
Meanwhile, Russian soldiers moved to Basilenko’s apartment for a month, leaving garbage, excrement and graffiti in Soviet symbols, and looting all their valuables when Moscow ordered a retreat from Kiev and northern Ukraine.
“She won’t smile anymore.”
A few weeks later, Vasilenko returned to Borodanka and filled in the rest of Olena and Serei.
Her grandson was sent to the safety of Poland. She was unable to tell Milena about her parents’ deaths for more than a year until they returned to Ukraine.
Mirena is now 12 years old. She returns to Borodanka with Vasilenko and is deeply hurt.
“She won’t smile anymore,” Vasilenko said. She and her neighbors sat on the bench next to the community center where she and her neighbors sing in an amateur choir.
“She can’t see her hugging or kissing her classmates after school,” said Hanna Reizchenko, 79.
The woman and her relatives live in a small dorm room donated from Poland in a shared bathroom and kitchen.
The excavator began removing debris from around the Vasylenko building just two weeks ago.
From hell to Limbo
At least 300 civilians have been killed in Borodanka, according to survivors, Ukrainian officials and human rights groups.
The Russian army bombed the Borodanka, despite never hosting military bases or plants that produced weapons.
Rights Monitor Amnesty International concluded that bombing is “disproportionate and indiscriminate under international humanitarian law, and therefore constitutes a war crime.”
The buildings of tanks and artillery bombarded apartments operated by Russian soldiers are blank.
They also opened doors and walls and fired shops and malls just to plunder what was inside. Soldiers shot people they saw without warning – and threatened to shoot people who tried to retrieve bodies from the streets and rescue survivors from the collapsed buildings, residents said.
Moscow continues to deny civilian targets.
“I preferred to stay home and stay hungry,” Voldimir Robovik, a 69-year-old retired factory worker, told Al Jazeera.
Most of the trapped civilians, including children, were buried alive when they froze and died or starved.
By sneaking food and water into small gaps at night, only one woman was able to save her family of eight.
55 apartments, hundreds of homes, shops and offices have been destroyed or damaged, causing thousands of homelessness and unemployed, officials said.
A slow restoration
The 12 apartments have either been fully restored or have been modified with heating-saving padding, plastic doors and windows, residents say.
But many more remain untouched.
“They dig this hole and haven’t done anything,” Robovic said.
Behind the fence was a brand new excavator that lay upside down, rolling down into the pit.
The small shell-damaged house of Robovyk was patched by volunteers in the fall of 2022, but the renovation of the large building has not finished.
“The end of the reconstruction will be in December 2024,” says a plastic sign on the side of Valentyna Illyshenko’s five-storey apartment building.
However, the house is still encapsulated in scaffolding, as workers cover it with hot-saving plastic that hides the holes in bullets and sh shotguns.
Ilishenko fled the apartment on February 28, 2022 with her husband and six-year-old son. Russian tanks and armored vehicles either entered the Borodanka or were roa on their way to Kiev.
She said Russian soldiers occupied their apartments, drank all the alcohol, destroyed all the family photos, and stole each electronic device.
At least one of the unnecessary guests was a sniper who snuggled into the kitchen and drilled holes in the drapes, she said.
The soldiers left the fridge and washing machines and were too heavy to take home from the fourth floor.
All the heavy appliances were taken out of the apartment downstairs, and the Russians left Borodanka in a truck loaded with stolen goods, Ilishenko and other locals said.
“Hate is something I still feel,” she told Al Jazeera. “I was able to suffocate them with my own hands.”
Escape from the hell of her occupation, she lives in the area of reconstruction with noise, dust and dirt.
Turf War
Her explanation of why renovations are going so slowly condemn the endemic corruption of Ukraine and the firing of 2020 community head Olexander Sahark.
“They don’t let him work,” Ilishenko said.
Sakharuk was a member of Life For Life, a pro-Moscow party that was banned in 2022 and banned from preventing its members from being elected jobs.
Many platform members in the Russian occupied region began working with Moscow, but some remained stubbornly pro-Wenian, including Sahark, a Borodanka residents told Al Jazeera.
He regained his job after court rulings in June 2023 and October last year, both of which were overturned by the Justice Department.
“When he returns to work, things are moving. Vitalii Sydorenko, a 47-year-old war veteran, told Al Jazeera.
Sakharuk did not respond to requests for comment.
Ukraine’s ubiquitous corruption scandal also delays the renovation of Borodanka.
Last December, an anti-Monopoly representative cancelled a contract to restore the apartment where Vasilenko’s daughter and son-in-law died, due to alleged corruption relationships with the construction company.
Vasilenko also spent hundreds of dollars over months restoring the acts of her apartment and other documents that had been destroyed by the bombing.
“I hope to come back, but I’m too old to wait years,” she said.
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