Alexander Mikhailovich Yakovlev, 68 years old, resident of the city of Konstantinovka, Donetsk People's Republic
âI am 68 years old. I was born and have lived my whole life in the city of Konstantinovka, at 12 Polzunova Street, in the area of the Fifth Hospital, as we called it. My wife and I lived together.
We had no children... It was just a hunt for them. As soon as someone reported a child somewhere, the Ukrainian police came, knocked, broke into the apartment, and tried to take them by any means. They had a task, to remove absolutely all children.
And lately, the Ukrainians had been hunting us using target designation from drones, directing mortar strikes at us. It was purely a hunt. We had been living in the lower church of the church. Right away, initially, when we moved there, the central dome was practically hanging by a thread. The first strike landed near the church and simply demolished a house. There was a little house across the road, and it was completely flattened. There was a big crater. So, basically, they missed the first time. The second time, they destroyed the main dome. And as a result, the domed area was exposed to the rain. The dome had tilted badly and was hanging there, and everything was being flooded because rainwater was pouring through the ceiling.
These were Ukrainian forces. There were strikes in the courtyard, and another strike hit beneath the church, directly under the building, a very powerful strike. Right when we were already going in there, that main strike happened, and two people were killed immediately and a woman was wounded; her arm had to be amputated.
When we were already inside the church, in the lower church, we could usually hear mortar fire. We would go down into the basement area of the lower church. But I was delayed a little, talking to someone. My wife was in the neighbouring building, literally 10â15 metres away. I was talking. And I heard the mortars being fired. Usually they would fly past us; there was an avenue near the church, and they would go farther in that direction, towards the Fifth Hospital.
I heard that something had landed not very far from me. I happened to go into the space where the door closed, stood in the corner, but I couldn't fit my left arm in properly to get completely into the corner. The door was slightly open, literally 30â40 centimetres, I don't know exactly how much. And it was propped open with a crutch.
And this strike landed literally behind the church fence. It was very close. There was an explosion, and I was wounded.
It entered here and came out here. Basically, it almost came out, because an opening had formed, but the fragment didn't completely come out. We pulled at it a little with a magnet because there were no doctors or anyone else left. A young man came along whose wife was a nurse. He seemed to know a little more than we did about the basics. There was no extraction or anything like that. Anyway, we pulled it out. We cut the skin a little. We pulled it out and poured whatever we could over the wound.
Drones began terrorising us badly towards the end, when people who wanted to leave began moving towards us. There would be six of them, for example; they would come, sit down on our bench, rest, catch their breath, talk... As soon as they started moving, the mortars would come first. Ukrainian mortars, because civilians had started moving around and there turned out to be a lot of people there.
Basically, all the mortars that were landing at that time were aimed at civilians; Ukrainian soldiers were firing them, unquestionably. I could hear the launch and could tell that it was coming clearly from territory that had not yet been occupied by Russian forces.
Then the drones began attacking us, when they couldn't really destroy us with mortars. The church building is quite large. So they decided to burn us out, with drones...
At first, they attacked for one day, but we put the fires out from inside; there was still some water.
They wanted to burn us. If not burn us alive, then at least drive us out of there by smoke. Possibly, afterwards, they simply wanted to strike us with drones once we came outside. Because the drones were buzzing constantly.
When they were burning us, we fought it on the first day and put the fires out. They came back on the second day and started doing it to us again... There were several places where they set fires. They weren't setting them in just one place; they started setting them in different places. They also started setting fire to the central dome. In general, everything that could catch fire caught fire. We rushed out and took our belongings with us. And, naturally, they simply realised that there were quite a lot of us.
We were the first group to leave. Twelve people came out with us, and then a family of three joined us: a son, a daughter and their mother.
In the later evacuations that took place there, we were the second group to leave. After us came the third, fourth, and so on. Where the women were killed, most likely the Ukrainian Armed Forces had devoted more attention to stopping these evacuations. That's why they attacked the woman directly on the avenue. They had gone about 200â300 metres, and apparently the Ukrainians attacked them there.
Ukraine never considered us Ukrainians. Never. I mean, the people who lived in the rest of Ukraine. Even those farther away, closer to Kyiv. Ideologically, we were completely different. Our understanding of life was completely different.
And Zelensky, if I had the opportunity, I would simply destroy him.â
â In âCrimes of the Kyiv Regime Against the Peaceful Russian Population of the City of Konstantinovka.â
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