• Nearly half of those who lived in the apartment building at 2 Pershotravneva Street in Izium, eastern Ukraine, were killed on March 9.
• The attack resulted in the deaths of entire families.
• It included the Yatsentiuks, Kravchenkos, and Stolpakovas.

Just before the bomb went off, Mykhailo Yatsentiuk emerged from the cellar to prepare tea for his granddaughter. A half-hour later, when he regained consciousness, the entire middle section of his apartment building had been destroyed, and the basement where he and his family and neighbours had taken refuge was engulfed in flames.

Nearly half of those who lived in the apartment building at 2 Pershotravneva Street in Izium, eastern Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian authorities, were killed on March 9. The attack resulted in the deaths of entire families, including the Yatsentiuks, Kravchenkos, and Stolpakovas.

The fate of these people was largely unknown until a few weeks ago, when Ukrainian forces launching a counteroffensive liberated Izium from Russian control after six months. This action revealed a mass grave outside of the city.

There were more than 400 graves there where the majority of the occupants of 2 Pershotravneva were interred, with few having to identify markers other than the numbers painted on the rickety wooden crosses.

CNN is now able to describe what transpired at 2 Pershotravneva on that day after interviewing a survivor, former inhabitants, and family members, as well as after studying photographs and video recorded in the immediate wake of the attack and after the town was liberated.

Two towers on either side of a smouldering mound of debris that once served as the apartment building’s centre were all that remained.

The Human Rights Commissioner of the Ukrainian Parliament stood in front of the wreckage months later, following the liberation of Izium, Dmytro Lubinets, and referred to the murders of individuals there “as a result of an attack by Russian troops” as being a part of “a genocide of the Ukrainian country.”

Russian forces allegedly targeted the structure with tanks after the airstrike while firing from across the river, according to locals.

After the smoke cleared, the dwellings of the individuals who had lived there were revealed after walls, floors, and ceilings had been torn off. Many of them had since passed away and were buried in their own basements, where they had sought refuge.

On that day, Yatsentiuk lost seven family members: his wife Natalia, his aunt Zinaida, his daughter Olga (also known as Olya) Kravchenko and her husband Vitaly Kravchenko, their son Dima, who was 15 years old, their son Oleksii, who was 10, and their 3-year-old granddaughter Arishka, for whom he had gone to make tea.

“I began yelling Olya, Natasha, Vitaly… Nobody responded, he said. “When I arrived upstairs from the ground floor, I sat down and sobbed loudly. Oh, God.”
Izium, which had a pre-war population of over 40,000, is a small town where acquaintances from elementary school remain close throughout the years and families continue to reside in the same house. Together with Elena (Lena) Stolpakova, Anastasiia Vodorez grew up.

The Stolpakovas are a “really happy, tight-knit” family, according to Vodorez. She told CNN from the Czech Republic, where she has spent the last four years, that friends would frequently congregate at their home since we enjoyed ourselves there so much.

Friends begged Lena to flee Izium when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started, but her father Aleksander insisted on staying in their house at 2 Pershotravneva street. Friends came to the conclusion that Lena was alive for them till they found her after learning that her house had collapsed as a result of the bombardment.

The end of March saw the start of recovery efforts, and the first victims were discovered just over a month after the attack. Tetiana Pryvalykhina, a different resident of 2 Pershotravneva who had fled the city but lost her “very devout” mother Liubov Petrova in the attack, said: “It was evident then that people perished in families.”

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