A Ukrainian man has described tying himself to a railing to sleep standing up in a harrowing testimony following a month locked in a basement by Russian forces. 

At least 130 peope in Yahidne, 80 miles north-west of Kyiv and close to the borders with Belarus and Russia, were trapped beneath a school in a space no bigger than 700 sq ft alongside dead bodies. 

Around 50 children were among those imprisoned, with the youngest just two months old, according to the BBC. 

One man was forced to tie himself to a railing with his scarf so he would not fall over when sleeping. 

“This was my half a metre of space. I was sleeping standing up,” Mykola Klymchuk, 60, told the BBC. 

Russian forces seized villages like Yahidne early on in the invasion as they launched their assault on the nearby city of Chernihiv.