Smashed tanks in the mud, destroyed buildings and mourning families mark a recaptured east Ukrainian village whose residents are contemplating the price both they and their former Russian occupiers have had to pay.
Ukrainian soldiers last month retook Husarivka, an agricultural village with a peacetime population of 500-600 around 150 km southeast of Kharkiv city, after heavy fighting following the Russian invasion on Feb. 24.
As Russian forces pull back after failing to take major cities including Kyiv and Kharkiv to refocus their offensive on the Donbas region in the southeast, residents of the surrounding areas are beginning to clean up after weeks of occupation.
Echoing accounts of ill-disciplined and poorly-supplied Russian forces from other localities in north and east Ukraine where the Russians have retreated, 79-year-old Nadezhda Syrova said young soldiers had gone house-to-house asking for food.
Some of the invading Russians said they were on a training exercise or there to clear Ukraine of bandits and “Nazis”, she added, standing on a patch of ground near her house.
“Where do you see bandits and Nazis here? We are just normal, peaceful people. Ukrainians,” she said.
In fields above the village, burned-out armoured personnel carriers and two smashed Russian anti-aircraft gun carriers sit abandoned in the mud surrounded by detritus including gas masks, computer printers and sodden footwear.
In the village itself, a destroyed Russian tank, already rusting, rests on the road, its blown off turret by its side.
A Ukrainian soldier said fighting went on for around three weeks with his side using anti-tank weapons, including artillery and foreign-supplied Javelin missiles, finally driving out two Russian battalion tactical groups.
“We bypassed the enemy from the right and the left, got into good positions and destroyed their equipment,” said the soldier, who spoke to reporters on condition he be identified only by his nickname Parker.
He said his unit had captured a Russian officer and two scouts from an engineering unit trying to plant mines around the village to stop the Ukrainian attack and had to fight off counter-attacks by what he described as Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups.
“Three times we fought off attacks when they tried to enter,” he said.
