‘We have nothing’: residents after Izium being retaken

Описание: (20 Sep 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Izium - 19 September 2022
1. Drone aerial shot of broken bridge ++MUTE++  
2. Wide of people walking across pantone bridge
3. Izium residents searching for wood in destroyed school
4. Closeup of women picking up wood
5. Man picking up wood
6. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian), Oleksandra Lysenko, 74, Izium resident:
"We have no heating, no gas. We have nothing. We are taking wood to heat water for tea and to make porridge. Look at my hands! I'm 75 years old."
7. Wide of people collecting wood
8. Closeup of woman
9. Wide of destroyed Russian vehicle
10. People transporting wood on cart
11. Man transporting big piece of iron bearing a Russian army sign on a bicycle
12. Wide of people transporting wood on carts
13. People queuing near mail truck delivering post
14. Closeup of queue
15. Ukrainian soldiers riding on a tank past the queue
16. Crowd of people near mail truck
17. Man with a package
18. People with bicycles
19. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian), Volodymyr Olyzarenko, 69, Izium resident:
"If the mail is working, it means that life is getting better. We will live and hope for the best."
20. Girl sitting on a bicycle
21. Wide of Izium city
22. Drone aerial shot of gravesite in a forest ++MUTE++
23. Investigators standing inside truck near gravesite
24. Closeup of workers
25. Workers carrying a body in a plastic bag
26. Workers putting body in truck
27. Wide of gravesite
STORYLINE:
Izium, in far eastern Ukraine, was among the first cities taken by Russian forces after the war started on Feb. 24 and became a command center for the occupying forces.
By early March, the city was almost completely isolated — no cell phones, no heat, no power. Residents didn't know what was going on in the war, whether their relatives were alive, whether there was still a Ukraine.
Izium was retaken in a Ukrainian counteroffensive on Sept. 10, but more than a week later residents are still emerging from the confusion and trauma of six months of occupation.
The school was a shattered mess. Its six-month life as a Russian base and mechanic shop ended in August with a Ukrainian missile strike.
Its years educating Izium's youth were over, but it had one last gift for the residents who needed so much: the wood that made up its lattice work, its chalkboards, its furniture and beams.
A handful of elderly residents — some prepared with gloves, sturdy woven bags, and hand tools — came by Monday to salvage firewood from the rubble.
It will be months, if not longer, before Izium will have meaningful electricity, gas and running water, and a chill is already settling in.
"We have nothing. We are taking wood to heat water for tea and to make porridge. Look at my hands! I'm 75 years old and this woman is even older than me. We are afraid of winter," said Oleksandra Lysenko, standing in a pile of bricks.
But on Monday morning expectations were running high for a more basic form of communication.
By the time the mail truck pulled into the parking lot of a closed market, more than a hundred people were milling around, waiting for the first postal delivery since February.
"If the mail is working, it means that life is getting better. We will live and hope for the best," said 69-year-old Volodymyr Olyzarenko. He already knew what the box sent by his adult children contained: warm clothes for his brother.
But there will be hard days to come.
A gravesite containing hundreds of remains was discovered last week in a forest on the northern outskirts of town and investigators are exhuming the bodies to start the grim job of identification.

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