When Russia’s full-scale offensive began, Ruslan Zaredinov, a Crimean Tatar and ATO veteran, lived with his family in the urban-type village of Novooleksiyivka, Henichesk district, Kherson region, 25km from Chonhar. They were unable to evacuate due to the almost lightning-fast occupation of Kherson region. For five months, the 35-year-old man and his family lived in fear that the Russians would come for Ruslan as it happened to his friends and familiar veterans.
ZMINA talked to people, volunteers, and drivers who crossed the checkpoints in Vasylivka. In a few months, they turned into a separate world, subject to the changing mood of the occupiers – lawlessness reigns here, people have to spend nights by the road in tents and cars or neighboring villages, undergo humiliating inspections, and do not have access to healthcare. The physically and psychologically exhausting wait for departure has already claimed the lives of more than ten people.
The man could not be found for a long time. His relatives believed in a miracle, but the DNA analysis of the body found later confirmed that Yevhen had been killed between the villages of Kolychivka and Lukashivka. The Russian military struck the bus he was traveling in with an anti-tank guided missile. Iryna, the wife of the murdered man, told ZMINA about the weeks spent hoping that her husband had survived, searching for him, and the circumstances of the Russian war crime.
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