An impact crater lies in the heart of the village of Yarova in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. It’s the aftermath of a Russian missile attack on September 9 that left a final death toll of 25.
“I am in the village of Yarova right now, near Svyatohirsk,” says correspondent Serhiy Horbatenko of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. “You can still smell blood here. Bicycles are scattered around. I see a baby stroller, and the crater of the bomb.”
Officials said the dead were all elderly people who were collecting their pensions.
“I can’t leave,” says Hanna Hryhorivna, a Yarova resident, whose husband was killed collecting his pension.
She says she will evacuate soon but needs to bury her husband first. “I haven’t buried the head of the family yet.”
Lesha’s mother died here, too. She was 72.
Lesha had just come home to Yarova for a vacation.
“I still haven’t tasted her borscht. Mother’s borscht. I cried for two days straight. I can’t sleep at night.”
Writing on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack on Yarova a “frankly brutal” air strike aimed “directly at people, ordinary citizens.”
Zelenskiy said a guided bomb struck the village, which lies about 24 kilometers from the Ukrainian city of Slovyansk.
It came just hours after Moscow said Ukrainian forces launched drone and missile attacks on two cities in Russian-occupied parts of the Donetsk region that left two people dead.
Hryhorivna is determined to respect her late husband’s wishes, she says.
“He asked to be buried near his father,” she says. “We dug a grave.”
She nearly died herself. “Two corpses just fell on me. I survived. See how it looks. It hurts here and everywhere,” she says, pointing to her injuries.
“They saved me. Two strong men fell on top of me. If they hadn’t, I would be dead too.”
