Russian soldiers descended on Bohdanivka a few days after the start of the war in Ukraine. What followed were weeks of horror

A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, soldiers claimed the small village of Serhii Tepliuk.

Warning: This article contains images and details that readers may find distressing.

Only hours after their arrival, they took Serhii home. For the next several weeks, his family was tortured in their own basement.

Russian troops lived above them, pointed guns at them, shouted at them, and subjected them to brutal mental and physical interrogations.

The father of three remembers when it all started, before he knew what horrors could be unleashed on his community.

“On March 8, around noon, we saw tanks… there were about 50 soldiers on this street and they just started shooting at women, near the store, you can find their graves,” he said. told the ABC.

“People then started to flee, but I was here with my family, my wife and my three children.

“We decided to hide.”

But hours later, troops entered his home – first ordering the family to hand over their phones, before interrogating them at gunpoint, then forcing them into the underground cellar.

The Russians arrived at Bohdanivka and just “took over”

Serhii’s family would spend the next 17 days living in this small room.

“They inspected us several times and told us that from now on they would live in our house,” he said.

“They kept asking, ‘where are the women for us?’ They were pointing guns at us – what was I to do?

When Serhii was asked what exactly happened to his family during their lockdown, he just shook his head.

His eyes filled with tears and he waved his hand in front of his face to make it clear he didn’t want to elaborate.

He sums it up in two words: “We suffered”.

When the Russians took control of the village of Bohdanivka, about 40 kilometers from kyiv, it became a base for their advance east of the capital.

The soldiers set up a military headquarters in the local school and claimed the properties around it – including Serhii’s – for their troops to live there.

“The town was not really defended, because the Ukrainian armed forces were at a certain distance… so the Russians just came and took over,” Anatoliy Bochkariov, the head of the local village council, told the ABC.

He said the village came under heavy shelling as Ukrainian forces tried to push back the occupiers and Russian troops fought to gain ground.

“I know people who stayed here during the occupation, most of them are old people who couldn’t travel, and they now have deep psychological problems, depressions,” he says.

His community is still discovering the extent of death and destruction.

“About 70 bodies have been taken away for criminal investigators to examine…but we continue to search for our dead.”

Hundreds of homes were reduced to rubble in the community. There is no electricity or gas and the fields around the village are littered with explosives.

Serhii’s house was destroyed after catching fire in heavy shelling while Russians were still inside.

Troops fled as flames engulfed his home and he managed to escape just in time.

“I don’t wish my experience on anyone,” Serhii said.

He has now turned his attention to repairing his house. When asked if he plans to continue living here, he replied with a slight smile, “Of course.”

A doctor’s nightmare in the face of the “worst” injuries

One of the senior doctors at Brovary Central Hospital near Bohdanivka said that in the past six weeks he had “seen the worst injuries of my 20-year career”.

“The wounds of war will continue for years…the wounds of [left-over explosives] will continue for so long, certainly years,” Volodymyr Andriiets told the ABC.

For weeks, he and other staff at this hospital slept in the wards.

The Soviet-era facility was closest to the eastern frontline in the fight for kyiv.

“Of all the damaged people [we treated]most of these patients were civilians,” he said.

“Too many women were injured, there were children injured, it was very terrible.”

He visited one of his patients, Volodymyr Doroshenko, who suffered serious leg injuries when he was caught in a warehouse explosion while trying to deliver food to people in need.

His mother cried over him as he shook her hand tightly, while listening to the doctor with a pained look.

He is ‘lucky’ compared to many others, Dr Andrieets remarked as he left his room.

He said that over the past few weeks there were a few patients whose stories kept spinning in his mind: a teenager who lost his eyes, a young man who needed both legs amputated and a young girl with a bullet in the back.

Families arrived carrying the bodies of their deceased loved ones to the hospital, hoping doctors could somehow save them, he said.

“The world can’t understand this feeling, we’re here and we wonder every day, why isn’t the world doing more?” he said.

When asked how he felt about the coming war and whether his community would recover, he replied fervently, “This is just the beginning.”

“We will overcome everything”

Just a few weeks ago, Tetyana Filipova was a headmistress in the nearby suburb of Velyka Dymerka, teaching hundreds of children.

Now she leads humanitarian aid efforts for the region.

She wants the world to know what happened to her community, even if she can’t quite figure it out herself.

“Our village has been turned into a war zone, and throughout this month we have had to endure a lot. Many villages have suffered.”

As she paced the school in her village, where every door is broken, she described the massive efforts underway in the village to help those in need.

“We not only distribute food, but also clothing for adults and children, around 700 people receive humanitarian aid here daily,” she told the ABC.

She wants people to know something else about her community: they can rebuild.

“Over time, our village will become prosperous again, we have very good people, we will restore everything and we will overcome everything,” she said.

“For our children, we must.”