Only about 30 people remain, living in underground and dilapidated buildings in this small village southeast of Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, according to resident Anatolii Klyzhen. About 1,000 lived here when Russian troops crossed the border in February, capturing the village shortly after. These forces left Krakow around 9 September as Ukrainian troops launched a lightning counterattack. This blitz could be a turning point, setting the stage for further gains in the east and elsewhere – but it could also trigger a violent response from Moscow, leading to a new and dangerous escalation of the war. There were no signs that the Russian soldiers were going to leave. “No one knew anything. They left very quietly,” said Viacheslav Myronenko, 71, who has lived in the basement of his bombed apartment building with three neighbors for more than four months.
Items left behind
The remnants of an escaping army still litter the village: packages of empty Russian army food rations, abandoned boxes of grenade instructions, a gas mask hanging from a tree, a military jacket trampled in the mud. Just outside the village, next to the bus stop, a Russian tank rusts on a road full of shell craters, its turret and cannon torn from its body. Viacheslav Myronenko, 71, stands in front of the entrance to a damaged building in Hrakove. He has been living in the basement of his bombed-out apartment building with three neighbors for more than four months. (Leo Correa/The Associated Press) Wild dogs roam the muddy streets and authorities warn of landmines and traps in the weeds. “Before, the village looked very beautiful,” said Klyzhen, who spent 45 days living in the basement of his building while Russian soldiers occupied his second-floor apartment, which was now trashed. He eventually managed to escape, deciding to take his chances at the checkpoints. Russian soldiers were both fearful and paranoid, he said, and were checking residents’ cellphones for anything anti-Russian or anything they thought might give away their positions. Some people were taken away and he never saw them again.
TVs are stacked
“I thought I could die at home or at the checkpoint,” the 45-year-old said on Tuesday. But he made it and returned after taking Hrakove to see what was left of his home. He found the windows blown out and food packets, clothes and Russian army boxes strewn around. In one room was a pile of televisions that he believes may have been stolen by soldiers. A damaged church is seen in Krakow. (Leo Correa/The Associated Press) After recapturing the village, Ukrainian authorities removed abandoned Russian military vehicles and exhumed the bodies of two men who had been buried on the side of a road after being shot in the head, Klyzhen said. He thinks they were Ukrainian soldiers, but he’s not sure. “They were killing locals, shooting them,” he said. “There was nothing good in here.” Serhii Lobodenko, head of the Chuhuiv district that includes Hrakove, said the area had seen heavy fighting during six months of occupation. “There were many damaged roads, private houses, many dead and many missing, military and civilian,” he said, as residents in nearby Tskalovsk gathered to receive food and water. “Now we are trying to repair infrastructure, electricity and gas. Food is being imported because people didn’t have food.” Anatolii Klyzhen stands next to the remains of a cluster munition in Hrakove. Russian troops occupied the small village for six months before suddenly abandoning it around September 9. (Leo Correa/The Associated Press) Images of destruction and stories of hardship are emerging from other places recaptured in the Ukrainian advance, including Izyum, a strategic town also recently retaken that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited on Wednesday in a rare foray outside the capital. Quitting was not an option for Lobodenko. “I’m 70 years old, I was born here,” he said. “Even if I had to die here – but obviously I want to live – I just want to die in Ukrainian Ukraine, no [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s. … So why should I run away from here?’
