Trostyanets is a small town in the Akhtyrsky district of the Sumy region. On March 1, the first Russian tanks entered it, on the 26th, the last burned out. The liberated city is gradually returning to life after almost a month of occupation. But the events of recent weeks have radically changed both the appearance of the city itself and the life of its inhabitants.. Gradually, they find the strength to talk about their experiences.. Irina Zbroyna managed to talk to Tatyana Ovcharenko, a resident of Trostyanets, who, together with her husband and daughter, escaped from the aimed fire of a Russian tank. A person with a visual impairment, Tatyana saw what no eyes in the world would like to see.

Her story is another page in the horrific chronicle of the Russian war against Ukraine..

: “They [Russian soldiers] went to Akhtyrka, there were military units. They drove until the Okhtyrchans blew up the bridge. After that, they sat down for a long time. They kicked people out, took away phones, tore gold from their ears, as they wanted, and mocked. They were everywhere like locusts. And everything is mined"

On March 1, columns of Russian vehicles entered Trostyanets from different sides and completely occupied the city.. At the railway station, the occupiers placed a headquarters, a bunch of equipment, they didn’t even remove the Ukrainian flag they hated - they shot.

Information about numerous cases of looting is confirmed by the head of the Sumy Regional Military Administration Dmitry Zhivitsky. From his Facebook we learn information about the robberies of shops, residential buildings and even second-hand stores. The city is filled with “demoralized, drunken Russian military men” who “go from house to house, get people out of basements, make them sit outside at night. They are afraid of air strikes, they are afraid of our artillery. They are holding the residents of Trostyanets virtually hostage,” he wrote on March 2..

Having taken control of the ambulance substation, the occupiers forbade the doctors to go to the calls, warned that they would shoot. Demolished power lines deprived the city and neighboring villages of light, communications disappeared almost immediately. Without food, medicine, without the ability to evacuate by rail or just go outside. Without permission to bury corpses lying in the open. Those from Trostyan who could - put the dead in basements, sheds, keeping them not even from the weather - from wild dogs. The war is not only against the living - the war against the dead. Funeral home shooting reported.

The head of the military administration will call Trostyanets " But even in hell, local entrepreneurs were able to provide the city with bread. Baked, handed out and delivered for free. Tatyana says they somehow agreed with the Russians.

Meanwhile, the enemy resorted to the forbidden tactic of using " " of the author - a heavy multiple launch rocket launcher] in the very center of the city, "

Heavy impact equipment appeared everywhere: in the center, in residential areas, and even inside cultural attractions. From there they beat on settlements nearby.

: The Russians fired straight from the Round Yard (approx.. the author - a unique architectural monument of 1820. , included in the TOP-100 most amazing objects of the state), bent the gate and drove. " Also the Chocolate Museum, Art Gallery - all shot.

We talk with Tatyana for several days, at a pre-scheduled time, because it’s not so easy to make an interview over a mobile connection. In the village where she is now, the network is poor and there is almost no Internet. For a call you need to go outside, for the Internet you need to look for happiness in an open field. After all, that's how I got some photos from her.. One of them - inscriptions with a marker on the board on the territory of the city chocolate factory. Next to other inscriptions, in the lower left corner I read: “Sorry, we littered you a little, but. Americans will help you.

Further, Tatyana recalls the checks of the population, and the peculiar “courtesy” of the Russian military, which they demonstrated before the upcoming shelling:.

: Before [approx. the author- to shelling] the Russians went into the apartments: “Hello, hello, you can see? Even took off his shoes. Looked everywhere, checked my passport, apologized and left. In a house near the station, people were given time for a meeting. Now I'm not at home"

And how so, I ask, people opened the door itself?

: How not to open when they said they would shoot otherwise?

I ask Tatyana how she and her family made the decision to leave the city.

: " We realized that it would be even hotter soon, we were waiting for the green corridor”.

At the moment when the Ovcharenko family decided to evacuate, there was almost no food, light and roads left in Trostyanets. The green corridors have not been opened for a long time. March 13, March 14 – departure is not possible. Finally, on March 15 - the head of the military administration reports - we agreed, you can go.

: “We left Trostyanets on March 15, we thought to stay in the village of Stanovo. We passed two Russian checkpoints, they let us through, and halfway to Stanovaya we ran into a column of tanks. The car had both red fabric and white, the inscription " But they still started shelling without warning. The sound is so muffled, first a shot at the asphalt, then at the engine, then at the glass. At first we raised our hands, we are without weapons... They continued shelling. I opened the door, wanted to run out of the car and I hear fluff on my shoulder! I realized that I was hurt. Then the husband and daughter got out of the car, we began to crawl along the landing. While crawling, they continued shelling from a tank and machine guns. We already hid in the landing and still heard the sounds of gunshots. Heard how they drove on. Then we got up and slowly walked through the field, another road through the village. Came on foot. It seemed like we were gone forever. There they went to my friends, they gave me first aid, washed the wound, put a bandage on it.. As I understand it, the bullet ricocheted and hit the shoulder behind, wounded, but remained in the T-shirt..

Tatyana sends a photo of a bullet and wounds. An open piece of lead on whose trajectory her life depended.

Two weeks after the events, Tatyana will write on her Facebook: “... they blew up the car, all the documents, property, clothes - everything burned down. Oh well, the main thing is life. Thank God everything is fine. I will never forgive... I wish the same for them, what they did to the Ukrainian people and Ukraine. And you will not be forgiven either from people or from God. Glory to Ukraine!

I read her messages: an ordinary page of an ordinary woman, and this inscription is like a bolt from the blue. Pain, shock, hate. Strength at the same time. Does Tatyana realize how lucky she is? Feels the armor of his heavenly shirt?

: “And by the way, there wasn’t much blood,” the woman continues. “So it seemed to me. Later I took a closer look: the sweatshirt is covered in blood, the down jacket is a mess.

Despite the agreements on green corridors, the Russian military, first from a tank marked “O”, then from machine guns, shot down a passenger car in which Tatyana, her husband and 15-year-old daughter were. After the liberation of the city, her husband will return to the city by the same shot way and see with his own eyes the crumbs left from the car, the city and, finally, the whole past pre-war life. However, this moment in the conversation has yet to come, and Tatyana and I are returning to the rest of the terrible chronicles of the occupation.

She talks about a large medical center in Trostyanets. The only complex consisting of a polyclinic, maternity hospital, surgery, very modern. Tatyana conveys the story she heard from her acquaintances - direct eyewitnesses of the incident.

A: “They [the Russian army] turned their tanks right on the hospital and bombed! First, in the sanitary inspection room, then in the maternity hospital, surgical department, hit the roof and on the 4th floor. Friends say that at the time of the shots, only medical staff, women in labor and patients were in the hospital.. Apparently, someone saw that [tanks] were turning around, managed to warn, then almost everyone was in the basement at that time. Someone gave birth there.

On March 26, with the help of the 93rd Kholodny Yar brigade, with the help of territorial defense and local partisans, the city of Trostyanets was liberated from the Russian occupation forces..

A true picture of the destruction was revealed: in Trostyanets, the central part of the city, the area of \u200b\u200bthe hospital and the forestry were badly damaged. The area of \u200b\u200bthe railway station and bus station is completely destroyed. Burned down and completely destroyed five-story apartment building opposite the station. Nearby villages are also destroyed.

A: “People were saving, building… I don’t know how? How!

Meanwhile, residents began to return to the city.. What happened to the property came back to see and Tatiana's husband.

: On the way I saw 10 or 11 shells sticking out of the ground, a burnt tank stands by the road. Our car is still on the road.. We counted 18 balls on the soot, 6 more aside, there was nothing left of the car at all, one box. Even the numbers melted, they are not visible. Our house in Trostyanka was a little more fortunate, although a shell hit it, but the apartment faces the other side, the windows survived. Only no gas.

However, not everyone had a place to return.. Most of those whose houses were lucky found extra confirmation of the true face of the Russian army at home.. A friend of Tatyana Ovcharenko left the house at the request of the Russians, and after the UAF knocked out the enemy, she found photographs of her teenage daughter hung around the house, a passport of an unfamiliar 11-year-old child and a red dress. The apartment was flooded, and in the middle of the room, right on the laminate, there were traces of a fire.

I notice that Tatyana tells what she experienced in detail and even willingly, answers about the future life, on the contrary, are filled with pauses.

: We were first in the Poltava region. Then we decided to move closer to home. I want to return, there is still a house. I don't know how I see my future now. Most of all I want this war to end as soon as possible.. So that there are no mines or missiles. And so that we can safely walk around the city and not be afraid that there is a stretch.