“Our beautiful Chernihiv is being destroyed. What have we done to them?’

Alla Skorik (38) from the Ukrainian city of Chernihiv is besieged by the Russians from three sides. The city – with 300,000 inhabitants, almost the size of Utrecht – is located between Kiev and the border with Belarus.

A road leads south through the middle of the historic city, to Kiev. “That’s what the Russians are fighting for, but our soldiers are fighting hard to stop them. On the eighth day of the war, no tank has entered the city,” Skorik said by telephone. She is the local editor-in-chief of the national broadcaster, but the editors are no longer safe. With three colleagues she has withdrawn to a house from which she manages her journalists who report on the war in and around the city. At night they sleep together in the basement.

“It was very quiet last night, then the bombs came. We heard planes over the city. They bombed a gas station, causing a major fire. Two schools were bombed this morning, where the reservists gathered to join the battle. The Russians must have known about it. Nine people were killed, and at least thirteen elsewhere in the city.

“A 16-storey apartment building was also bombed. I don’t know why that happened. Fortunately, all residents were in an air raid shelter. I know a woman who lives there, she massaged me once. I called to ask if I could help. ‘I don’t need any clothes, no food, nothing. I want my apartment back,” she said. What can I do?

„We also received a few Iskanders in the past few days [raketten, red.] fired at us from Russia and Belarus. They destroyed the center. Everything is broken there: a theater that opened its doors in 1939, shops. The corona clinic is ruined. They also tried to bomb our TV tower, but they failed.

“I really can’t understand. What have we done to our neighbors to deserve all this fire? We have such a beautiful city. It is green here with beautiful parks. Delicious and creative restaurants, interesting festivals. Normally tourists come here and everyone falls in love with the city.

“North of the city is a neurological hospital with mental patients at the front. We talk to the chief physician every day. He says there are three hundred patients and he is no longer being supplied with food, no medicines. Cars trying to go there will be shot at. Even a fire truck they tried to send was shot at.”

What does she do in the evening to relax in the basement where she sleeps with her four colleagues? Skorik starts to cry, she thinks of her sons of three and ten years old. They are out of town, away from the front, with their father. “I’m not just a journalist, I’m also a mom. The biggest problem is that my kids aren’t with me. I want to give them a childhood. We had such a beautiful life, we had everything to be happy. It’s such a terrible war. I just want it to stop.”