“Those bloodthirsty bastards opened fire from their rusty tanks straight at my crib, my motherland… This church was a symbol of that community and my childhood at grandma’s,' Julia Tymoshenko told The Daily Beast
s tanks finished the job for him. As they shelled the town indiscriminately on their way towards the capital, the church caught fire and burned to the ground.
“The air raid sirens are like lullabies now,” Olena Marchenko, a 47-year-old territorial defense volunteer says as she cooks a dinner of meat stew, eggs, and vegetables for the soldiers stationed at her outpost. She is posted at the crossroads right outside Brovary, some 20 kilometers from Russian army positions. The frequent clacking of machine-gun fire, though, suggests that the fighting is taking place barely a few hundred meters away.
Spray-painted graffiti on a stone barrier next to a few smashed-up tank traps reads “Welcome to Hell”—but none of the few dozen soldiers holding out here seem particularly fearful. Sergey, a 52-year-old veteran who has been recalled for military service, points toward his son who is guarding a checkpoint barely 20 meters away from his own. He is comforted by the fact that if the Russians push through here, they will fight, and possibly die, by each other’s side.
Still, the Ukrainian government reports that Russian forces have killed more than 2,000 civilians across the country since the war began two weeks ago. They have also destroyed innumerable buildings, including apartment blocks, airports, churches and schools. Already, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has said he will visit Ukraine to investigate potential war crimes committed by the invading forces.