Article by: Orysia Hrudka, Bohdan Ben

Edited by: Michael Garrood

As the Russian soldiers occupied villages of Chernihiv Oblast, they locked up nearly 400 people, including kids and infants, in a basement and fed them with dry galettes from their rations while eating the villagers’ meat, cheese, pigs, and even dogs. They banned villagers from using phones, threatening to shoot every third local if they find one, abducted girls, killed 60 cows on a single farm, and beat the local villagers for living too well because they put chickens in a “house.” Euromaidan Press (EP) reports from the site to expose Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

The Yahidne village: the torture site in Chernihiv Oblast

The village of Yahidne is located on a highway 10 kilometers south of Chernihiv. It has gained notoriety as a torture site, where Russian soldiers transported locals from the surrounding villages. In particular, Russians held captive 377 people in the village’s school basement for almost the entire March.

Here in Yahidne, the Russian forces maintained a stronghold until 30 March, when the Ukrainian troops expelled them. The Russians arrived here from the village of Shestovytsia located to the west of Yahidne, Chernihiv volunteer Roman Movchan says, with a part of these forces continuing towards Kyiv and another part staying in Yahidne to block the way to Chernihiv.