Abandoned forest camp near Kiev exposes horrors of Russian invasion

Dmitry Nekazakov was walking his dog before going to work when Russian bombing began in Hostomel, a town on the outskirts of the capital Kiev. The sky hummed with low-flying helicopters from which Russian troops jumped as rockets rained down.

It was 6:40 am on February 24, the first day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and for nearly a month the bombing had not stopped. Nekazakov said he spent 20 days sitting on the floor in his basement overnight. In the cold light of day, he and other residents of his neighborhood would emerge to witness the damage that had been inflicted on their homes and devise plans to find safer places to take shelter.

“For a long time, the projectiles were coming – the rockets were coming,” he said.

The Russian missiles and rockets that decimated buildings, lives and homes were fired from a sprawling Russian base hidden in the forest about 4 kilometers away.
Now, only the remains of that sprawling military camp are among the trees.

THE CNN was guided through the camp by Ukrainian special forces who are picking up clues about what Russia’s plans may have been for the capital amid the rubble.

At the start of the invasion, as Russian troops advanced towards Kiev, Ukrainian special forces believe 6,000 marines set up camp in this pine forest for a month, in rain, snow and temperatures that dropped to -12 degrees Celsius. The site included a main command post and a headquarters. It was from here and a nearby field that the Russian army launched attacks on Kiev, Hostomel and the city of Bucha.

“Here they made a decision on the deployment of further actions, on the directions of the offensive, tactics of action and so on,” an official of the Ukrainian special forces told CNNpointing to where each part of the operation was located.

Huge ruts are visible where troops fired graded missiles from a field, located forty kilometers from the capital. In the forest, discs of graded missiles that have been launched and boxes of ammunition litter the ground at launch positions.

Russian forces built shelters, command posts, ammunition storage and communication lines using the trees and wood of the forest.

They slept in underground fortifications, covered with wood and green wooden crates that once contained several BM-21 grad rocket launchers and cannons. Black wires connected each of the forest shelters for communication.

The forest was also littered with food containers branded with the Russian military: a member of the special forces discovered a soaked notepad left behind, containing instructions from a previous mission in Azerbaijan. A Russian camouflage and concealment instruction manual was also found at the site, along with clothing and shoes.

Pointing to the size of the field, an officer told the CNN: “Russians fight not in quality, but in quantity”.

“They don’t consider soldiers as people, for them they are cannon fodder and consumables. The tactics of the Russian army are perhaps reminiscent of the Middle Ages, when they did not take it for skill, but for quantity,” he added.

Remnants of military equipment, clothing and fortifications aren’t the only things the Russians left behind.

Russian soldiers stormed nearby neighborhoods, raided homes and terrorized residents they came into contact with, according to locals and a priest.

The torture, humiliation and shallow graves of people killed by those at the base now haunt these villages.

‘I’ve been beaten, but I’m alive’

Vitaliy Chernysh, from the village of Zdvyzhivka, on the outskirts of Kiev, said he was cycling through his village when he was captured by Russian forces, who were “hunting Nazis”. He said they held him for almost 24 hours.

Chernysh remembers praying in what he thought would be the last few minutes of his life. “I was blindfolded, hands tied and wrapped around me. They were shooting,” he told the CNN.

Chernysh said he was locked in a shed after being forced to walk through a minefield. He said Russian soldiers were considering whether to douse him with gasoline and threatened to take him to the crematorium. Soldiers shot around his body while he was tied up, and constantly asked what his last wish would be, he says. The man reports being left in the frozen shed for hours.

“I was beaten on the arms and legs, below the waist. The bruises remain,” he said. “I thought my leg was broken, I was limping. But I am alive and well, thank God.”

In his garden, rocket debris still lies on his lawn – another daily reminder of his painful ordeal and the next month under Russian occupation and attack. Chernysh survived, but other villagers were killed after being tortured by soldiers who came out of their forest fortress.

Vasiliy Benca, a local priest in Zdvyzhivka, told CNN that Russian troops, tanks and armored cars converged on the village and remained there for a month. People were afraid to come out of their basements, he said. When Benca did so, he said he found five men whose bodies had been mutilated in the garden – and two more in the forest.

“The Russians asked – or forced me – to bury two (additional) women in the cemetery,” Benca told CNN.

Nekazakov, who fled when the Russians attacked his village, has now returned to his home in Hostomel. He remembers all the bodies he passed when he left, he said, and regrets that he can’t do anything about it.

Now, he said, he hates Russian President Vladimir Putin and the soldiers who devastated his hometown.

“I just feel hate. We wouldn’t have thought for hundreds of years that this could happen,” he said, looking at the graves of those who died. “We can’t forgive him for the rest of our lives.”