It became extremely difficult to get to the city through the destroyed bridges and roads.

More than 700 dead and 40 missing – such statistics of victims of Russian shelling voiced by Chernihiv Mayor Vladislav Atroshenko, but these are very preliminary figures. For a week now, the city has not heard of shelling.
In many places there is a lack of light and water, there is a shortage of food. Supplies are hampered by the fact that the racists destroyed the main bridge over the Desna at the entrance.

In peacetime, the road to Chernihiv from Kyiv via Brovary took up to two hours. Now you need to go across the destroyed bridges across Vyshhorod, along the Kyiv Sea and the village of Lebedivka, then Desna, Honcharivske …
In some places the whole road is in pits. But you can drive. Closer to the city – evidence of war – a burned tank, radar complex, a roadside shell stuck in the side of the road. The whole journey takes less than three hours.

Industrial shops, gas stations, private houses, factories … the Russians fired on everything. Many people left. Those who could not survive hell. But the city is coming back to life. There are queues for humanitarian women and mini-bazaars everywhere. Prices are high. Milk – 25 hryvnias per liter, eggs – 40-50. But boiled sausage for 220-250 hryvnia per kilo …
With the restoration of the highway, Chernihiv residents hope that prices will return to pre-war levels. In the meantime, the traces of the war are being removed from their hometown.

And yet, for thousands of Chernihiv residents, life has almost stopped. In the middle of a broken private sector, Nadiya Anasiivna is sadly walking down the avenue and says she does not know how to live.

«My house was burned down on the 20th, I don't know what it's for, my mother barely survived at 42 because of the Nazis, but who are they?»

– says a woman with tears in her eyes

How many residents of Chernihiv did not survive the attack of the occupiers – is still being calculated. There are hundreds of dead and killed and thousands wounded.
People are returning en masse to their hometown. Someone to live, someone to take things away.

Chernihiv is really coming to life, there are more and more people on the streets. But few are smiling. Alexander, a 24-year-old rescuer, says his smile is like a defensive reaction. In a month of work, he saw so much grief that he had not seen in years.

The villages near Chernihiv and the outskirts of Chernihiv suffered the most from the shelling of the occupiers. This is mainly the private sector.

«Two rockets fell here, where an air bomb fell, it burned all the houses. But these houses were burned down, 120 mines came, I talked to the military, they counted.
In two hours of bombing 160 mines arrived, we can say that the Russian army is not at war with our army but with the civilian population, just destroy the civilian population»

– say local residents.

Burnt skeletons are left of the houses next door at best. The wooden houses for which Chernihiv is famous simply fell into a pile of boards due to the blast wave. Without exaggeration, the long street is a ruin.

From constant bombing, even the ground in the gardens cracked and pushed to the surface planted onions. In a month and a half, people smashed the windows of the surviving houses almost every other day.

Part of the city is still without water supply. Water is delivered and the amount of water is no longer limited, as before, you can collect as much as you want. Now people are standing safely and quietly on the street in droves. During the siege, Russian troops deliberately fired on people for bread and water.

Some citizens still have no electricity. The city authorities have not yet promised heating in the apartments of Chernihiv residents in the fall. CHP is not subject to restoration. Just like the Gagarin Stadium, which was shelled by the Russians. A funnel in the middle of the field from a five-hundred-kilogram bomb, the stands were smashed. In total, more than two dozen crimes of Russians against cultural heritage have been recorded in Chernihiv.

It is unknown when public transport will start operating in Chernihiv. There are no railways in the region at all, dozens of bridges have been blown up, and several villages have been razed to the ground. It takes years and incredible finances to restore Chernihiv. Authorities began gathering information about the devastation to assess the extent.