Robbed peasants, a destroyed school and blood-soaked torture chambers. What the occupiers left behind in Kalynivske, Kherson region

“Eternal memory and the Kingdom of Heaven to fellow villagers who tragically died during the occupation of our village by the “Russian peace” from March to November 2022.” A small memorial with such an inscription cannot be missed when entering the Kherson village of Kalynivske from Mykolaiv. Next to it is the closed St. Michael’s Church of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

(UOC) of the Moscow Patriarchate with broken windows. During the occupation, there was a Russian tank on the road near it, which fired at everything around it, not even sparing its own temple.

From the first days of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, the Kalyniv community found itself in almost complete isolation. In March 2022, the Russians immediately “put down” all the surrounding mobile towers, so what is happening here became known for sure only after its complete release on November 11, 2022.

From the very beginning of the occupation, the front line passed through the Kalynivska community. For the first two months, the Russians did not allow the locals to leave for safer territory, immediately problems with the supply of products began. Perhaps some food could be purchased only in neighboring communities, but no one was allowed there.

The Russian “liberators” left behind a school in Kalynivske that was completely looted and partially destroyed, where 251 children studied at the beginning of the full-scale war. The occupiers turned the basement of the school gym into a torture chamber. Locals say that when they went to his house after the release, they saw everywhere blood and the remains of some kind of acid, buckets, chains, gas masks and mattresses on which the victims slept.

“Our region is a large number of torture chambers. We are still contacted by locals who say that there were torture chambers in their basements. In total, about 30 people passed through them.

Mostly, men for a pro-Ukrainian position. There were teachers and those who simply did not want to receive a Russian passport,” local residents say.

According to the acting director of the Kalynivsk general secondary education institution Ihor Lutyuk, the Russians removed all the equipment from here, and some of it was destroyed on the spot. Shortly before the full-scale war, a lot of equipment and laptops were purchased for the school. Due to covid and the war, most of them here did not have time to use.

Many of the locals have nowhere to return. Due to heavy fighting, the villages of Sukhy Stavok and Andriivka were completely destroyed – they were wiped off the face of the earth by the Russians. There is a lot of destruction in Blagodativka (more than 70% of damaged houses), Novohrednev and Lozovo. Some of the houses in these villages were destroyed by Russian aerial bombs.

About 500 damaged and destroyed houses have already been counted in the Kalynivska community. 237 people applied to the village military administration for examinations and issuance of certificates for compensation. This process is complicated by the fact that many people do not have real estate ownership documents. Therefore, they are eagerly waiting for the resumption of work of the district court and technical inventory bureau in Velika Oleksandrivka, which can significantly speed up the process of obtaining the necessary documents for compensation. For now, people have to turn to the Bilyaiv district court of the Odesa region. Despite the fact that this court tries not to delay the consideration of similar cases from residents of the Kalyniv community, correspondence and trips to Odesa take up a lot of precious time.