When Ivan Simoroz took me to his parents’ house in the village of Borodyanka near Kyiv, to show how much he suffered, at first glance I could not understand where this broken house was. Then I realized: this is because there was simply nothing left of the building that resembles a residential building.

Looking at a 26-year-old young man in a police uniform, standing on a shapeless pile of rubble, it seemed possible to contain the full scale of the devastation around him.

This material contains descriptions that may shock some readers.

“On February 26, I was at my workplace in the regional police department, we were talking on the street when we heard: bang!” Ivan recalls.

Russia had invaded Ukraine two days earlier, and the Russian military, advancing on Kyiv, attacked small towns in the Kyiv region.

“The earth shook. I started calling all my relatives: my wife, brother, mother, father, grandmother – and everyone turned out to be” outside the coverage area. “I realized that something bad had happened.”

Ivan heard the sound of an exploding shell and understood that he had hit something – he just did not know what it was.

Together with his boss and several colleagues, Ivan went by car to his house on Central Street. The eyes of the policemen were twisted piles of rubble – the same picture that we saw today.

I asked him what thoughts he had at that moment.

“Horror. War. Very scary, you don’t understand anything. You hope that someone else is still alive somewhere, maybe hiding in the cellar.”

Soon neighbors and relatives arrived to help Ivan find survivors.

Ivan found his mother first, her body sprawled over the refrigerator. At 200 meters from her, he saw his younger brother. Body without legs and arms. Sitting next to his brother in the garden was his beloved dog.

Then they found Ivan’s grandmother – also dead, under a pile of bricks.

Aunt Ivana found his one-year-old daughter Polina – on the sofa, the baby was still breathing.

Then they found Ivan’s wife, and then his father. They were dead.

Polina died in the hospital a few hours later.

Ivan lost six members of his family that day.

According to the police, Ivan’s house became the first destroyed building in Borodyanka. Subsequently, artillery fire turned it into one of the most destroyed settlements in this war.

With incredible self-control, Ivan continues to show us a pile of stones, which until recently was the home of his family. He remembers everything to the smallest detail.

Somewhere through the rubble, bright tulips, planted by his grandmother, make their way.

If you look closer, you begin to see traces of life: one of Polina’s shoes or a bathrobe hanging on a beam.

After the attack, Ivan took only three days off. He worked at a nearby military checkpoint helping residents evacuate to safer areas. Subsequently, for this he was awarded a medal for service and bravery.

The local police unit, where Ivan served, was one of the first to return to work after the Russian soldiers left the Kyiv direction. Since then, more than 1,200 bodies of civilians have been found in the region.

How can Ivan continue to live and work? What drives them?

Work, he admits, has been an important distraction, but it also helps him cope with his personal grief. When the residents of Borodyanka, together with the police, began work to restore the city, Ivan began to meet people who also experienced a similar tragedy.

The support of close friends and colleagues cannot be overestimated either, he adds.

“Everyone in Borodyanka has some kind of trouble and problems,” says Ivan. “We need to help people. Work and my friends are what help and support me.”

“He is an open, friendly, talented and focused person,” says Ivan’s boss, Vyacheslav Tsilyurik, head of the Borodyanka police department.

“For you to understand, one of Ivan’s main character traits is that in six years of work he did not take a single day of vacation.”

“I have never met people so strong in spirit,” Cyrulik notes, expressing the hope that he will not meet anyone else who will have to be so strong after such a tragedy.

There is silence along the main road through town. When you see an entire apartment building without a facade or lying in ruins, you understand how lifeless this place has become.

People’s apartments are on public display where the shell hit the neighboring building. Bookcases and kitchen tables set for meals are somehow frozen in time in some homes.

“People are completely demoralized,” says Vyacheslav. “They are learning to live in today’s reality.”

At some point, Ivan’s mask of self-control nevertheless slips – when he describes a place 30 kilometers from us. Six wooden crosses on freshly poured mounds of sand at the cemetery in the village of Peskovka.

Polina’s grave is easy to recognize among the rest by the toys. But what pierces you on the spot is the date of death common to all six: 02/26/2022. All the cruelty and irreversibility of this war is embodied in a single date engraved six times.

“When you come there, you cry all the time,” Ivan says, swallowing a lump in his throat.

Lyrics also contributed by Siobhan Leahy and Hannah Chornous

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