1
Proskurivska Street leads to the National Guard unit in Hostomel — part of the neighborhood, which was once a closed military town. In house number 9, from the windows on the fourth floor, the playground between the chestnut trees can be seen — as well as the Antonov airport. For 17 years, Nina has been looking at them from her living room. Now she recognizes the window behind the burnt-out air conditioner she is still paying the loan for. In the entrance, there are burnt remains of flowerpots, old ads for the sale of apartments and washing machines, as well as internet providersʼ services hanging on the wall. Someoneʼs cat is meowing non-stop nearby.
Behind the house, Nina had a small garden with strawberries and raspberries. Two elderly neighbors were buried there under the shelling. Her friend, who knew how diligently Nina was digging the ground so it would be pliable and plump, dug the graves.
The house burned down during the Russian occupation of the settlement.
— Grandma Tina burned down on the first floor, — Nina shows the burned-out windows. — She loved cats and dogs, asked me to buy them food for her pension, and fed them. On February 24, her son came to pick her up, but she refused.
Only two white plates in the sink were left from Tina. From the previous life of cheerful black-haired Nina, there is a bent cake pan, which flew out of the apartment to the flower bed between the white violets.
On February 24, senior soldier Nina put on her uniform and went to Kyiv to the military unit where she still lives. That morning, she took her 9-year-old son and mother, who had come from Cherkasy oblast, to the basement to "calm their nerves".
— Now I think: "God, what did I think, I left the child and mother in the basement and went to work!" — Nina doesnʼt seem to believe it herself. — We expected that everything would take place in Kyiv, not here. I felt as hopeless as it gets.
Nina drove to the capital for several hours due to traffic jams. She bought medicines her military unit needed. A few hours later, she called her friend in Hostomel and learned that the "Kadyrovites" invaded the town.
On the same day, acquaintances took Ninaʼs mother and son to a nearby village. There they spent 10 days under Russian occupation. Ninaʼs friends helped the Ukrainian Armed Forces to adjust fire on their streets over the phone, and she passed the data to the headquarters. Later, her friends, having agreed with the Kadyrovites, took her family away.
For the first time Nina came back to Hostomel on April 21. Until recently, she hoped that the home she cared about so much survived. However, only the walls of the apartment remained, and not all of them. Now she comes here, takes some photos and does not dare to compare them with the photos she bade before February 24.
Opposite Ninaʼs house is a school and kindergarten where her children went. The headquarters of the Russians were there. There are still trenches, a bowl, piles of garbage, and army packs of orange juice which seem inappropriate here. New Yearʼs decorations made by children still hang on some of the intact windows. Walking around the yard, Nina thinks if she has to leave the army:
— I donʼt know what is happening in the soul of my child. He was in a normal environment, and then his mother left him in the basement, he and his grandmother were at the strangersʼs house and saw everything: Grad shellings, tanks in the garden, Kadyrovites whom he talked to. He just kept talking about them in the first days. He posted a photo of a missile flying over Hostomel on his Viber account cover. And now, when I talk to him, he always asks, "Mom, donʼt hang up, letʼs talk." And when thereʼs nothing to talk about, he just puts the phone next to him to know Iʼm there. I have already given 25 years to the army, and now I am thinking of resigning, at least for a while, because otherwise I canʼt care about my child properly.
25 years ago, because of her work, Nina moved to Hostomel, and now she knows someone in almost every house of this military town. Thanks to connections from the very first days, the neighbors created a chat on social networks, where they sent Russian location points to adjust the fire. Now they are discussing what to do next and how to document the loss of housing.
— Itʼs scary to come back here, because the airport and the military unit are nearby, — says Nina. — Probably, housing will not be rebuilt for us here, but we need to give people some confidence!.. I want to have some strategy to calm people down. And we seem to have everything frozen here. Nobody says whatʼs next. People donʼt understand the algorithm [of their next moves].
Nina says local authorities are proposing to wait for a law on how to obtain compensation for the lost property. However, she sees that both in neighboring Irpin and in Bucha, temporary housing is already being set up, special commissions are recording what has been lost, and architects are coming for a plan to rebuild the cities. So she is worried about whether Hostome wonʼt be forgotten. Her own experience alarms her — she never the land military are eligible to receive.
Nina filed confirmation of destruction in the Diia [Ukrainian e-governance app], Civilian Administrative Services Center, and State Emergency Service. She says she has faced several problems so far. For example, to close the accounts in running water utilities provider, one needs a certificate that confirms the property was destroyed, which canʼt be obtained as no expertise has been made yet. Nina and her neighbors have been waiting for the authorities for a month, but so far, they have only recorded that the house needs to be demolished. Nina went to Irpin to obtain the certificate on child support from the Civilian Administrative Services Center because in Hostomel civilian workers told her they are in bad relations with their Irpin colleagues. At first, the police task force did not inspect the military town because it did not know that it was part of Hostomel. Some streets are still uncleaned. These little things make Nina feel like theyʼve been forgotten.
But, in the end, the issues with the property are not the main thing. Just thinking about it, she tries to distract herself from the fact that the old life will not return. And any certificate wonʼt help here.
— Itʼs like a nightmare. I loved the town so much in this season, everything was so green — and now these black houses stand like coffins. I donʼt feel sorry for that apartment and stuff in it, with hands and a clear mind Iʼll have everything again. But my husband and my childrenʼs family albums, our childrenʼs albums, can not be restored. [The occupants have] erased what we lived for. In just one swoop. And itʼs so hurtful.
2
— Why didnʼt you take the curtain? — Nina looks into the kitchen.
— What for? We wanted to replace it anyway. However, we did not plan such radical changes, — laughs big Dmytro and packs a table that looks like a toy in his big palms.
Dmytro and Ira are Ninaʼs friends. At the table now leading to the box, they drank more than one cup of coffee. That coffee stolen by Russians living in the apartment.
This is the familyʼs third visit to the surviving property. For the first time, IT specialist Dmytro, a former military serviceman, came with his friend to check whether the apartment had been mined. Then he started to clean — all the things from the closets were lying on the floor smeared with tomato paste and swamp.
- My friend could abstract and work calmly, and I could not do anything at all on the first day, — Dmitry remembers, and his gaze fades for the first time.
The Russians took out of the apartment a TV set, a drone, Dmytroʼs dream — home theater system, and his numerous instruments. There are only 20 pieces of tools stolen. Dmytro wrote a statement to the police, State Emergency System and Civilian Administrative Services Center. He did not receive a certificate of loss of housing. So far there is no feedback, and does not expect anything:
- Life is already returning to Bucha and Irpin, there is movement. Here there is none. In our town, even landfills were not cleaned, basements were not dismantled. So Iʼm not counting on anyone, Iʼll just work on. I asked the guy at the police what deadlines to expect. He said, "When the war is over, weʼll see." When I asked him where people live, he replied: "Well, you do live somewhere."
While his wife and son are in Poland, Dmytro lives in a friendʼs apartment in Ivano-Frankivsk. Thatʼs where everything is transported.
On the first visit, Dmytro wiped the dust on the shelves and washed the floor. He sweeps every time, as if he will return someday. He brings food for now stray cats and dogs. Does not remove the garland from the balcony. He lovingly shows the newly laid tiles in the kitchen and the growth marks of the children on the door frame. Iryna also asks Nina to water the roses and magnolia, thinking where to transplant them, as a friend has already done with her own flower bed. And they look out the window — in front of the burned house with the inscription "Chechen force".
"Life is archived," he says shortly. — On the one hand, we are lucky, because there is a place to go and something to take out. On the other hand, it is more difficult to break this connection with the house. When you see a hole in the house, it is easier to put a cross and go on. And so it seems that you have the apartment, but you can not live in it.
- I open the door and it seems that now the neighbors will come out, — says Iryna.
But they will not come out — they survived, but the apartment was burned completely.
Dmytro and Iryna left old Russian books from their library on the bench in front of the entrance. The man is joking, maybe someone will need it. But everyone understands that no one needs Russian books here anymore.
3
Dmytro and Iryna are lucky twice — their garages were not affected by the fire, although there was a fire around them. On the way to them it takes minutes to dormitory, where Nina lived in her first years in Hostomel.
It will probably not be demolished. Compared to other buildings, it was not damaged.
- Nina, whatʼs with the water ?! — A pale stooped woman walks out of the window on the first floor, and, noticing the camera, adds in a hoarse voice: — Iʼm terrified! Can you shoot mine? Excuse me for the smell. Exhale deeper. Please, let them see what is happening here!
We go to the entrance to Ninaʼs friend. On the wall, there is the inscription "Grozny", on the door, supported by an emerald green "Kobzar" — "Chechnya".
In the kitchen, a man is cutting green onions on a chair. The others ignore the strangers and discuss how their friend was killed:
- He was torn, he was thrown there, fuck...
"Take a picture of something," the woman said, and her acquaintance shouted from the corridor.
- Take a picture, fuck! Take photos of everything that will help you restore all this chaos. For later, everyone could understand what motherfuckers they were.
"Itʼs clear here," Nina says shortly, and we close the door.
In pursuit, the woman still asks where to go with claims of lost property. After a brief explanation, she apologizes again for the smell in the apartment and returns to the dark entrance.
Despite her experience, compared to the yard in the apartment you can still breathe. On the street there is a corpse smell mixed with the sweet aroma of lilac. In front of the dormitory there are mountains of garbage that is not removed. A little further away, closer to the garages, it only gets worse — as in the rest of the area, cow carcasses are rotting, which the "Kadyrovites" stretched out of the dining room. Flocks of insects are buzzing above them — a kind of "Lord of the Flies", where the boys played and became monsters. Monsters with a primitive obsession with the genitals and the deity, so the walls of the garages are painted with penises and scenes of rape next to Orthodox crosses and inscriptions "Allah akbar".
Behind the garages was another camp and trenches of the Russians. So far, locals are cleaning up there. A pile of juice bags, clothes, mattresses, childrenʼs puzzles, toys with sequins, pink threads for knitting, lids for canning, office chairs, vases, baby blankets, vases, icons. On the other hand, as if from another world, neat garden beds with already sprouted vegetables.
Proskurivska Street makes a circle, and we find ourselves under Ninaʼs house again. A car drives up behind us, and when the old man gets out of it, Nina recognizes Serhiy, her neighbor. However, he does not look like himself — he barely stumbles, his arms are twisted, his face is swollen. He says that his wife could not stand it — she is in the hospital with a heart attack. He came to the former house for the first time and now looks around in confusion:
- And how to get a new apartment?.. I took all the documents and passport, and photos…
4
The Civilian Administrative Services Center, where Nina directs everyone to go, is crowded. Applications are accepted on the first floor, and the police can be contacted on the second floor.
- I came to deal with the documents because of some chaos, — sighs the woman who just came to the center. — The decision on the house was promised, but there is no.
She has to wait. The workers shout at the old woman, who has problems hearing. People are confused and discussing what date of the destruction of the property to choose if the shelling was constant. They do not know the exact area of the apartments and houses because the documents did not survive. There is no place to make the necessary photocopies here.
Satellite images show that Hostomel was destroyed by 58%. The head of the Hostomel military administration said in an interview back in April that the settlement would be rebuilt gradually, but so far no plans to rebuild or compensate had been announced. Dumenko did not respond to a request for comment, but we will publish his answer when it arrives. The website of the Hostomel community has step-by-step instructions on how to leave a statement about the loss of property. Anyhow, the city is cleaner and more well-groomed than it was after the deoccupation. It is probably not very realistic to check each apartment for mines.