Lukyanivka Liberated

Radio Télévision Suisse | 13min
Postproduction script

00:00:04:15 VO: -Lukyanivka used to be a quaint village, where the Kyiv inhabitants used to come to spend the weekend. The fighting stopped three days before shooting this film, after the fierce fighting between Russians and Ukrainians that left Lukyanivka devastated and emptied of its inhabitants. Nazariy and his brigade of the Ukrainian army have just arrived here after one month of Russian occupation.

00:00:46:07 Nazariy: -The Russians had no mercy for the villagers. Behind me, there was the house of a Ukrainian family. They imagined their future, had dreams, but the Russians came with their tanks and the dreams ended up in ruins.

00:01:06:17 VO: -Nazariy is a chaplain in the army. We suggest to him to go to the village church which he hasn't seen yet. The church did not survive the duel of the Russian and Ukrainian guns. For the chaplain, it is clear the Russians are to blame.

00:01:33:23 Nazariy: -For them there is no difference between a church and a toilet.

00:01:41:16 VO: -The church was built in the 19th century, a wooden construction that had survived until then.

00:02:02:11 Nazariy: [The Lord's Prayer in Ukrainian]

2’20 Title: Lukyanivka Liberated

00:02:25:18 VO: -At the time we are filming, Vitaly and Mikola are coming back to their village. They had fled a few days before when the great battle began. Today, they are discovering the remains, like these three Russian tanks demolished by the Ukrainian army. Mikola is in awe. He was he was a tanker during the USSR, at a time when Ukrainians and Russians were brothers.

2’27 Lukyanivka, Ukraine

00:02:53:11 Mikola: -If we aim there, at the base of the tower it makes the ammunition explode inside and it blows up the tower.

2’58 Mikola, Resident of Lukyanivka

00:03:01:02 VO: -Before fleeing the final assault, Vitaly and Mikola had held on during a month of Russian occupation, staying at home.

00:03:10:08 Vitaly: -The Russians only allowed the transport of food, but they warned us, if we went out into the street, they would shoot.

3’14 Vitaly, Resident of Lukyanivka

00:03:22:11 Mikola: -The Russian soldiers were in my yard, and for a month, the Russians were shooting over my house and the Ukrainians were shooting back.

00:03:31:09 VO: -Mikola takes us to see what is left of his house. But on the way, a Ukrainian soldier threatens to shoot if we go further.

00:03:41:14 Cameraman: -He says he's stopping.

Reporter: -Stop!

00:03:45:09 Reporter: -We can't go any further because it is still mined. Mines are active.

00:03:56:24 VO: -The mines seem to be a pretext, because Mikola is allowed to advance. A pretext to prevent us to show that his house has been transformed into a camp of the Ukrainian army. On our way out, we come across Vitaly again who notices the extent of the destruction in his village. At his nephew's house, the damage is huge. We can follow the trajectory of the tank that went through the houses.

00:04:36:13 Reporter: -How did it feel to be to be occupied by the Russians?

4’50 Vitaly, Resident of Lukyanivka

00:04:41:07 Vitaly: -I don't know, I can't find the words. That was the shit. I was lucky.

00:05:00:03 Reporter: -More lucky than your neighbours across the street.

00:05:03:05 Vitaly: -It's an understatement to say so it's destiny.

00:05:13:04 VO: -His house only had only a few broken windows. He shows us the hiding place where he was staying while the shooting was going on.

00:05:29:12 Vitaly: -I thought: either I live through this, or I die. Either I live down here, or I go directly up to heaven.

00:05:41:15 VO: -Micha never left. This 82 year-old man lives in the heart of the fighting and he found himself the only civilian to stay there.

00:05:51:11 Micha: -I would have offered you some birch juice but I've already given it all away to the Ukrainian soldiers.

5’58 Micha Dovbenko, Resident of Lukyanivka

00:06:01:24 VO: -Micha did not see himself going elsewhere even during the occupation.

00:06:06:24 Micha: -The Russians looted a little, not much. They took the cell phones, they came to look at mine but they didn't want it because it's old.

00:06:18:04 VO: -What hurts Micha, is not so much the destruction, but that his friend Chilko was killed.

00:06:25:01 Micha: -He went out to his garden. He was killed by the Russians, his wife found him only the next day.

00:06:35:09 VO: -A soldier interjects that the area would no longer be safe.

00:06:39:15 Man: -There are tanks coming.

00:06:41:18 VO: -A Russian tank is still in range. It could point its cannon at the village. We can still hear the sound of the fighting intermittently, but the tank does not fire. At the end of the day, we leave for the cemetery with Micha. It is on the opposite side of the village and the fighting has prevented him to visit the grave of his friend who died 5 days earlier. When he finds it, it's not just sadness that overwhelms him.

00:07:19:17 Micha: -I am still angry.

00:07:29:18 VO: -And his anger finds an easy target. Inna, a neighbour who came to talk to us has some family in Russia.

00:07:40:08 Micha: -It's your dirty Russians who want to bring their regime here.

00:07:45:17 Inna: -Don't say that to me. I don't even talk to my sisters who live in Russia. My own two sisters in Russia, I don't talk to them anymore since the beginning of the war because they don't understand what's going on here. They tell me we are the ones who waging this war.

7’57 Inna Ovod, Resident of Lukyanivka

00:08:09:16 VO: -What Inna wanted to tell us is that even the cemetery suffered from the fighting.

00:08:14:15 Inna: -Look what they did, it's a missile that was fired here five days ago, it brought the bodies out of the ground.

00:08:27:24 VO: -The next day, Inna dried her tears and rode her bicycle to go on a tour around the liberated village. Inna meets her neighbours, they have not seen each other since the start of the fighting. They tell each other their stories.

00:08:45:15 Inna: -When the missiles arrived, my husband was eating and I was in the kitchen, I prayed to God that we would stay alive, we got down on our knees, we crawled out and the missiles hit for the 2nd time.

00:09:02:23 VO: -Further up the street, a new brigade is patrolling to make sure that the Russians do not try to retake the village. The military fears a counter-attack and that the Russians have left booby traps behind them. For the head of the brigade, Russian occupation will leave indelible traces.

00:09:28:04 Andrii: -I am sure that for generations and generations, we will never be friends again, we'll only be enemies.

9’34 Andrii Sichka, Head of the brigade

00:09:38:21 VO: -The brigade gathers around the village grocery store, empty since the beginning of the war. The mood is good. The recapture of Lukyanivka is a good victory over the Russians. A strategic point on the road to Kyiv. The mayor of the village joins us, and tells us how he had to take it upon himself to talk to the enemy.

10’19 Volodymyr Bondar, Mayor of Lukyanivka

00:10:09:05 Volodymyr: -When they came to the village, the first thing they did, was to come to the town hall and to the store. They asked "who is the chief of this village, we need to talk." They wanted to know how food and bread could be delivered to the inhabitants of the village, in the part that they occupied. So they let us organize a humanitarian corridor for people to leave.

00:10:36:20 Reporter: -How did you feel as the mayor to see your own village occupied by the Russians?

00:10:43:24 Volodymyr: -I can't say anything good about the Russians. I was concerned above all for the life and health of my fellow citizens. I had to make sure that everyone stays alive.

00:11:14:09 VO: -Inna continues her tour of the neighbourhood. The country is mobilizing to help those affected by the fighting.

00:11:28:18 Man: -There are those who fight in the trenches. Our way of fighting, is to help others.

00:11:43:04 VO: -Her grandchildren have come to find Inna. The last time they saw each other, they were hiding in the kitchen and a missile went through the living room. Lisa, aged 8, and her  grandmother ran to the basement to take refuge.

00:12:08:01 Inna: -A shell went through here, a second one hit us there.

00:12:19:08 Lisa: -I was afraid, it was flying, I saw the splinters and it went boom boom.

00:12:26:24 Inna’s grandson: -Just before, when it passed over our heads over our heads, I was afraid, but now, the explosions are further away.

00:12:34:11 VO: -The threat of war seems almost distant for these children, despite the fighting that continues a few kilometers away.

12’45 Credits:

Sébastien Faure

Oleksandr Nedbaiev

Jon Björgvinsson

Frédéric Demilliac

Laurent Jespersen