This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation through its initiative Women on the Ground: Reporting from Ukraine’s Unseen Frontlines, in partnership with the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
The entrance to the Ukrainian city of Irpin holds a harsh reminder of the trauma suffered just three years ago.
Next to a newly built structure crossing the icy Irpin River lies the mangled remains of the Romanovsky Bridge that Ukrainian forces intentionally destroyed to block Russian soldiers from advancing to the capital of Kyiv.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24, 2022. Oleksandr Markushyn remembers the moment clearly.
The mayor of Irpin, a Milwaukee sister city, says he received a text on the messaging platform WhatsApp from the Russian military, informing him it would soon invade his town. Markushyn had two choices, according to the text: He could either surrender his city to Russia and remain mayor, or the Russian military would take Irpin by force.
He hugged his 4-year-old son, Mark, close to him during an interview with the Cap Times as he recalled the Russian military threatening to harm his child if he did not surrender.
Markushyn refused their menacing proposal.
“And I wrote, ‘Try to destroy (us),’” he said, proudly.
Russian forces occupied the city for one horrifying month, during which close to 300 civilians were killed, thousands of homes were demolished and 70% of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed.
“Why was Irpin such a key city for the Russians? Because Irpin is only 5 kilometers from Kyiv,” Markushyn said.
If Russian troops had advanced to Kyiv, the country likely would have fallen into Russian control altogether. To keep that from happening, Ukrainian troops blew up the only bridge out of Irpin.
The self-destruction might have saved the country, but it meant thousands of civilians had to evacuate through winter mud and the frigid river. Some were able to evacuate by train in the first days of the invasion, but Russia quickly bombed the railways civilians were using to flee and continued to shell the area of the river while civilians escaped on foot.
Markushyn evacuated his own son and thousands of others but stayed back to defend Irpin. In addition to serving as the city’s mayor, he also led the area’s territorial defense squadron.
“When I was appointed as the head of our territorial defense, I had two main decisions,” he said. “The first was to build defensive lines, defensive fortifications for our city, and the second was the evacuation of the population.”
Down the road from Irpin, the neighboring town of Bucha suffered what much of the world considers war crimes. Unarmed civilians were raped and murdered in cold blood. Images of their bodies lining the streets were broadcast around the globe.
Exploding teddy bears
In Irpin, as they retreated at the end of March 2022, occupying Russian soldiers rigged land mines in the rubble of decimated homes and nearby playgrounds. They planted children’s teddy bears with grenades hidden inside, Markushyn said.
“As soon as a child picked up the toy, it would explode,” he said.
Residents of Irpin wanted to return home as soon as the city was liberated, the mayor recalled, but the entire community first had to be carefully de-mined. Some homes could be repaired. Many required complete demolition before they could be rebuilt.
Irpin’s cultural center building still stands in ruin. Markushyn said the city hopes to rebuild it this year.
“It was, of course, very hard to see. It was burning, and you couldn’t do anything,” Markushyn said. “Because there was no electricity, no water, no firefighters, no services at all, nothing was working, and there were battles in the city.”
Lidiia Rodchenko, 72, and her husband, Viktor, had already experienced evacuation before they settled in Irpin.
They were forced to flee their hometown of Avdiivka near the Russian border in 2015, amid fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists.
They returned to Avdiivka in 2016, then fled again when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
But the war followed them to Irpin. They had to escape once more.
“We had already gone through this in 2015. We knew what it was like,” Lidiia said.
The apartment they rented in Irpin was destroyed.
Once Irpin’s occupation had ended, they moved into a tiny home with their cat, Tomas. The group of homes had been donated by Poland as part of the country’s humanitarian aid to neighboring Ukraine.
The home is small but it’s on the ground floor, so Lidiia is able to easily move Viktor’s wheelchair from room to room and take him on walks outside. Viktor, 70, lost both his legs to complications from advanced diabetes, leaving many of the chores to Lidiia.
“I planted 22 rose bushes here. We have a drive for life now,” Lidiia said. “We will wait for victory. We need victory. We want to live in a free Ukraine and think for ourselves.”
Inside a kindergarten bomb shelter
Down the street from the destroyed cultural center, a drive for life is overflowing among some of the city’s youngest residents. At the Ruta Kindergarten School, children ages 2-6 enjoy a newly rebuilt school after the original building was destroyed by Russian shelling three years prior.
At recess time on a February school day, the children, donned in colorful snowsuits, hats and mittens, played in fresh snow.
Kseniia Katrych is the headmistress of the school. She proudly showed the bright classrooms — with large windows to let in natural sunlight — the kitchen where chefs prepare the students’ lunch of borscht and bread, and the school’s basement bomb shelter.
The school was rebuilt with donations from Lithuania. In front of the school, the Lithuanian flag flies next to the Ukrainian flag.
“As a symbol of our friendship,” Katrych said.
The multi-room shelter has play areas with toys, books, tables and chairs.
“We are really proud of our shelter. It is about 800 square meters (more than 8,000 square feet), and we’ve got everything children need,” Katrych said.
The shelter has bathrooms, a kitchen area and small beds for children to nap. Some of the youngest children nap in the bunker each day so that teachers don’t have to wake them mid-sleep if the city is advised to shelter from a potential air strike.
The entire school — 300 students along with teachers and other staff — goes to the shelter each time the air raid sirens sound in the city.
“It could be five times a day. It could be three hours,” Katrych said of the sirens. “There are some days without alerts. But we come every time, quickly.”
Many of the children are young enough that war is all they know. Most find the air raid sirens a normal part of life.
Katrych was not in Irpin when the school was destroyed. She evacuated with her family the first day of the war.
“I even crossed the bridge,” she said. “It was not destroyed (yet).”
She worked in a kindergarten in Poland for a year before returning to help run Ruta.
“I love it. Kindergarten is my life,” she said. “You know children give you special energy. They are our hope.”
Markushyn feels that same sense of hope and pride with how the community has rebuilt and recovered with the help of sister cities like Milwaukee, which donated vehicles and humanitarian aid.
“When the city was in ruins, completely destroyed, and there was only one street passable for cars, it was fear, it was horror, and it seemed to me that rebuilding the city would be almost impossible,” he said. “But there is a saying: ‘The eyes fear, but the hands do the work.’”
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