The Basement. Woman Soldiers of Ukraine

On the 3rd of March, 2022 Russian troops entered the tiny village of Yahidne in Northern Ukraine. On the next day, armed with rifles, they forcibly extracted local residents from their houses and convoyed them to the school. Russians stuffed/ packed all 341 residents of Yahidne, including 77 children, into the school basement, roughly 190 m2, where the people spent the next 27 days. The conditions were inhumane: no ventilation, no oxygen, no water, no space to stretch your legs, pitch darkness. They used a bucket as a toilet in the same basement, and received some food once a day. Sometimes, when the Russians were in a good mood, they let the people outside to breathe for 1.5 hours. In the span of the 26 days of captivity, 10 people died in the basement. Olha, one of the villagers, kept a diary during her captivity, in case no one will survive.

Now, a year has passed after those events. From the first sight, the village is coming back to life. But it is no longer normal any more. While some residents are trying to forget the traumatic experience, there are people in the village who again and again come back to the memories trying to work out what happened. Their lives are intertwined with the experience of close co-existence. All of them have different motivations and personal stakes. But the openness gives them a voice to represent the community and to build a new identity of Yahidne.