“There were a lot of deaths that day. I buried my friend in the school yard”

An IDP from Sevastopol buried his friend, an IDP from Donetsk, in the schoolyard. Soon after that, he himself was wounded, but survived.

Yuriy Prokhorenko moved to Irpin town after the annexation of Crimea. With the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, he took up the duties of a bomb shelter’s superintendent at school no.2 of Irpin town. Several hundred people hid there. Yuriy and his family filmed on video shelling attacks, people who died on the streets, and fighting against cases of looting in the town.

My name is Yuriy Prokhorenko. I have been living in Irpin since 2014. Before that I lived in Sevastopol, but after the occupation of the Crimea my family and I moved to Kyiv, and then to Irpin.

Everything was fine until 24 February of this year. Basically, everything happened before my eyes, both the defence and liberation of Irpin town, as well as before the eyes of my relatives, my near and dear ones. I stayed on here together with my family. My daughter and my grandchildren were here too. They lived on Pavlenko Street, where some terrible fighting took place. We woke up at 6 o’clock because we heard some explosions.

Some aircrafts were flying. Everything was on fire in the area of Hostomel. The war did not leave us to the last, until I was shell-shocked.

I evacuated a small kid of nine years old, because it was impossible to be here; there was intense shelling. I, who moved 950 kilometres away from Sevastopol, could not imagine that there would be a war here. It was a shock for me. I opened the window and saw how everything was flying and exploding.

A rocket fell literally behind this house. One can live two or three lives and not experience what we experienced those days. Almost immediately, mortar shelling of Irpin began, shelling with rocket projectiles. I had to take my family out to a safe place. I took them to school no.2. There were bomb shelters there, where they then stayed all the time. I had to go back to our house and deal with questions of food and water.

There were more than 200 people in the basement and I took the responsibility to provide these people with everything they needed. On 25 February, I turned to the territorial defence unit and was enrolled as a member of the territorial defence unit, but there were not enough weapons then. So I engaged in providing for the people who were hiding in the basement of school no.2. There were up to 200-210 people there. A school building where more than 200 people were accommodated...

Almost every day incoming artillery shelling struck the roof, the walls, the nearby area, and the building itself. Once we were on the way to the bomb shelter. My wife baked some bread. We came under shellfire. Miraculously, we ran behind the building just in time. A fraction of a second later and we would have been dead.

One shell hit the gym. When moving from one classroom to another, all the windows were damaged, as well as the partition walls. Only by a miracle, our administrative manager was not injured. They knew it was a school building... and still a direct hit on the roof... The only thing that saved us was the fact that we went around the corner.

It was on 4 March. My wife and I came to the clinic. The shelling began, which caused serious destruction. At this moment, I phoned my friend and said, “Take your wife and go to the bomb shelter.” He and his wife rushed out, but they ran out not through the back door, but through the front door, and at that time a shell hit them. He was struck by multiple shell fragments. I called him and his wife picked up the phone and said that Sasha was no more with us, he was dead.

His wife was wounded. I took her to the clinic, and then she was taken to Kyiv. It was a challenge to leave, as the bridges were blown up. One shell strike was right in the centre of our yard. I could not take Sasha’s body to the morgue or to the cemetery because the shelling was incessant. I had to bury him on the 11th day. All this time he was on the staircase in the entrance hall of the building. I buried him on the territory of the school, in the schoolyard. Later, after Irpin town was liberated, he was re-buried. He was 51 years old. He moved from Donetsk. He escaped it there then, but death found him here. Our family was through a lot. Many people died then. One guy was killed near the hospital. I covered his body with a blanket. Thank God, our area was not under occupation.

The central streets of the town remained free. The defence was organized and the enemy did not come through here. The journalists who were present here... I came out of the bomb shelter because some tanks passed by. I thought those were the invaders. I went to the corner and found some French journalists there. At that moment, an incoming shell strike occurred. We were lucky as the shell fragments flew in the other direction, but the blast wave threw us up to two meters.

I was shell-shocked, and the journalists’ driver too. Three ribs were broken.

I barely reached the bomb shelter and calmed the people down letting them know that there were no enemy vehicles. All the time I have a question in my mind, “For what? Why?” I lived all my life in Sevastopol. I did not know anything about [Stepan] Bandera, and then I began to read. Well, he was a man who wanted the independence of our state, who wanted us to be a sovereign power. So what is wrong here? And why they do not get any claims for Lenin and Stalin? Now, I have become like S. Bandera.

What has Putin achieved? Hatred for everything Russian, although I am a Russian-speaking man. I cannot open a book [in Russian] and start reading it. I can’t see the monuments to Soviet soldiers, although my three uncles died in World War II. But now I can’t. It just broke, transformed me.

For what? For what? For what we have this notorious Russian liberation? To liberate us? Well, they constantly say that they want to liberate the Ukrainian people from the Nazis. And now they began to say “to liberate from the nationalists.” Well, I am sorry. You can change your profession, you can change your year of birth, but you cannot change your nationality.

You were born a Ukrainian, so you will die a Ukrainian. How can one deprive Ukraine of its nation? We are, we will be, and we are not going anywhere. And we will live happily and peacefully. I am one hundred percent certain of this.