When Vladimir Nesterenko was a child, all he wanted to do was play basketball. In the village where they lived in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, the brown-haired 12-year-old dribbled and shot hoops with his father Oleh. Michael Jordan, the NBA legend, was his hero.

His mother Julia Nesterenko was happy to encourage the habit. “We even had a basketball hoop at home,” the 33-year-old told CNN as she described their first family home. It was their “nest,” she said, with a small garden and a vegetable patch.

Vladimir Nesterenko grew up wanting to play basketball. The 12-year-old boy dribbled and shot hoops with his father Oleh in their village in southern Kherson region. He admired Michael Jordan.

Time to leave the occupied territories for safety and survival, Julia said. The Nesterenko family feared for their safety after Russians took control of their village, Verkhnii Rohachyk.

She said the family took the shortest route to Ukrainian-held areas, with only a backpack and important documents. After boarding an evacuation boat operated by a local resident, the family of three crossed the Dnipro River on April 7 to the Ukrainian-controlled territory on the other side. It flows into the Black Sea after passing through Ukraine’s Kherson region.

The boat crossing from Pervomaivka to Pervomaivka should have been easy. Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the military administration of Kryvyi Rih, in the neighbouring region of Dnipropetrovsk, said it was the village’s seventh boat evacuation since the war began.

Julia, two other survivors, a friend of one victim, and several regional officials say it was a bloodbath. They said Russian rockets and gunfire targeted the boat after it drifted into the frontline.