{"id":1252,"date":"2022-12-13T13:35:10","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T12:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soniakh.com\/?p=1252"},"modified":"2023-04-03T12:59:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T10:59:19","slug":"chepurnyi-what-we-can-learn-from-our-ruins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soniakh.com\/index.php\/2022\/12\/13\/chepurnyi-what-we-can-learn-from-our-ruins\/","title":{"rendered":"Landscape After The Battle \u2014 What We Can Learn From Our Ruins?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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This text is about the village of Moshchun on the Irpin River, the place near Kyiv where a key breakthrough and containment of the Russian army took place. This text arose from notes I took after visiting the village during April and May 2022. I am grateful to the SONIAKH digest team for the invitation to write an extended version of these notes. The experience of writing was therapeutic for me, and gave me the opportunity to think about the traumatic events that we as a society are going through during Russia's military aggression against Ukraine.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Ozerna Street in Moshchun, May 2022. All images courtesy of the author.<\/figcaption>\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Entering Moshchun, immediately after the forest you pass, there is a checkpoint. During April, there was an ongoing process of demining in the recently de-occupied village, which for several long weeks was at the front line near the Irpin River. Main roads and trails are already relatively safe, but the work of clearing mines continues in private yards and houses. Therefore, at the entrance to the village, you must sign a receipt “I, [surname, name and patronymic, passport number], have been warned about the danger, in the event of my death or mutilation, I have no claim against the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” An effigy of a Russian soldier hangs on a tree next to the checkpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A ruined village greets us on a sunny day, the bloom of spring has just begun. The first greenery is visible, but the gloomy black February-March has not yet retreated. We drive along destroyed Ozerna street, which runs on the side of the road opposite to the forest. In the village, we meet journalists who go in an organized group into private yards accompanied by the army, where they take turns asking local residents about the events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moshchun, Horenka, Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel, Borodyanka\u2014this list is not exhaustive. All settlements have turned into temporary museums of the Russian invasion and Russian war crimes. Located near Kyiv, these towns have good transport and infrastructure connections with the capital. At just thirty minutes by car, they are more convenient and safer to visit than the de-occupied territories in Chernihiv oblast, Sumy oblast, Kharkiv oblast, or, even more so, the occupied and completely destroyed settlements of Luhansk oblast, Donetsk oblast, and Kherson oblast. The fighting, which lasted here for the first month of the war, has destroyed almost every house, down to the foundation in some areas. Before the full-scale war, there were almost 800 year-round residents, as well as a significant weekend community. The forest that surrounds the village on all sides has been dug up for the numerous trenches, and the trees are gutted by shelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Walking through the village, I try to imagine how many more of such settlements do not make it into the pages of Ukrainian and international media? Being in such a place, you indeed realize the scale of the crimes. I look at the destruction here and think about the eastern Ukrainian cities of my native region: Mariupol, Sieverodonetsk, Rubizhne, Bakhmut, Izyum and others, places that I have visited many times. It hurts me to recall these memories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Reading holes and ruins, I try to imagine what happened here. The Internet is full of testimonies about the events. In March, when I was staying in Kyiv, I saw on news channels an aerial photograph of a devastated village and Russian paratroopers on numerous armored vehicles storming the narrow streets. Now, being physically present here, I observe all those houses without roofs, and the abandoned and broken military equipment in the middle of the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the fields around the village, you can see many craters from explosions, mine warnings and Russian military uniforms left behind by soldiers who changed into civilian clothes and tried to escape the battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n
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