"People started dying, the occupiers did not allow us to take them out. We were sitting in the "basement of death" with the corpses"

In a few days, the Russians pushed the residents of the village of Yahidne into the school basement, which used to be a gym. The occupiers held three hundred adults and more than fifty children hostage for a month! Valentyna LOHVYNCHUK was among them.

The villagers brought down chairs and benches from the school and kindergarten to the basement. Due to lack of space, most of them could only sit. Without moving, the hostages' legs began to cover with wounds. Valentyna recounts how her fellow villagers died of suffocation, disease and hunger. Sometimes the bodies of the dead could not be taken out of the basement for several days.  Some people started to go crazy.

One day, the Russians brought a wounded man into the basement, and Valentyna fed him with baby formula with a spoon and moistened his lips. There was almost no chance that he would survive. But the wounded man was lucky. Valentyna LOHVYNCHUK tells how she survived the "basement of death".