The battles for Chernihiv lasted from February 24 to April 2, 2022, exactly 1 month, 1 week and 1 day. Some towns and villages were under occupation. They, like many other settlements of Kyiv and Sumy regions, experienced all the horrors of war.

One of them was the village of Mykhailo-Kotsyubynsky (Chernihiv region). On March 28, the occupiers from Gomel entered it. According to the residents of this village, there were more than 700 of them.

The occupiers destroyed power grids, leaving the village without communication and the Internet. Destroyed fences and houses, looted, looted. They lived in empty houses, nothing was taken out of the houses, but the village council brought equipment and personal belongings of workers:

“They rode, walked as owners. When I came and said, “Please let me go to the village council," they wouldn't let me. Then I realized that they had disassembled all the computers, pulled everything out, ruined it. That's why they didn't let me"

In the first days of the occupation, a shop in the center of the village was looted.

“Tears. Despair. Workplace… loss. Lots of tears. What did they take? – Alcohol, food, cookies – well, everything. Products, mostly. And all the alcohol, you might say. Everyone took it anyway"

– says a resident of the village Oksana.

On March 4, a rocket shattered the school building. At that moment, there were people in the school vault – about a hundred villagers, including about 30 children. Everyone was in the basement, except for one person – a technician. She was in the utility room. There she died under the rubble

One of their teams came in and said, “I'm sorry, please, we didn't bomb your school on purpose. We were just drunk." Imagine, that's what they said."

– told a local resident Alexander Tokar.

That's right, the occupiers explained the destroyed houses, school and other buildings. Locals say the Russians did not stage mass atrocities. But some people are still missing.

During the war, 1,018 educational institutions were damaged by mass bombings and armed shelling by occupiers of Ukrainian towns and villages, of which 95 were completely destroyed.