![]() ![]() People could now begin to make sense of their loss, accounting for the dead and visiting their graves. ![]() The siege had lasted thirty-nine days and, according to the city’s mayor, killed some seven hundred people-though countless more died as a result of freezing temperatures, lack of medical care, and shortages of food and medicines. The city’s residents, who numbered two hundred and eighty-five thousand before the war, emerged from their basements and municipal bomb shelters the power flickered back on, and water again flowed from the taps. A week later, that withdrawal was complete. On March 29th, the Russian military announced that it would “drastically reduce military activity” in the area, part of a larger redeployment reflecting its inability to take Kyiv-ninety miles down the highway-and other large cities, including Chernihiv. ![]() Finally a solution was reached: during episodic lulls in bombardment, city workers would pick up a dozen or so bodies at a time, put them in caskets cobbled together from spare wood, and lower them into the ground beneath a muddy field at the Yalovshchina cemetery. Supply routes were blocked, and no factories or workshops were open, which meant it wasn’t possible to produce enough caskets to keep up with the bodies piling up at the morgue. Where to bury them? The city’s main cemetery, on the northern outskirts of town, was under constant bombardment. As many as fifty people were killed each day, struck down while in line for food or huddling in their apartments. All the while, the Russian military pummelled Chernihiv with bombing raids and missile fire, turning a locked-in city into an urban death trap. Roads and bridges leading out of town had either been bombed or were now the site of active battles between Russian and Ukrainian forces. By that point, Chernihiv had been under effective blockade for more than two weeks, with most buildings left without electricity, heat, or water. In the middle of March, bulldozers dug trenches in an unused field at the edge of the Yalovshchina cemetery, in the city of Chernihiv, in northern Ukraine. ![]()
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