In Gostomel, the cannonade of shots did not stop for a minute/Screenshot from the video
The urban-type settlement of Gostomel, Kiev region, has already been liberated from the invaders. However, the horrors that the Russian army committed there will remain in the memory of Ukrainians for a long time.
In the first days after the liberation, the bodies of the victims right in the middle of the road, bloodied clothes, destroyed houses and fired upon cars, with which the locals tried to escape from death, shocked. Ali Safarov, a resident of Gostomel, told Channel 24 about what the Russian army did and how the Ukrainians survived.
How it all began
According to Ali Safarov, who bought an apartment in Gostomel several years ago , February 24 at 5 am everyone felt the arrival of the first Russian missiles – the house seemed to bounce.
I assumed that the war would start, but I thought that all this would start on the weekend, because according to the logic of military operations, it is more convenient to attack on the weekend, when many have dispersed. But they attacked on a weekday. It was terrible, to be honest. The inflicted missile strike was very strong and powerful, but it was struck precisely at the airfield, so even our glass did not fly out, although it caved in from the explosions, – Safarov noted.
The man was sure that after the strike on the airfield, Gostomel would not be of interest to the Russians. He also believed that they would not develop an offensive against Kyiv due to the lack of logistics, that is, the supply of ammunition and fuel. According to Ali, he served in the automobile battalion, so he roughly imagines how much transport is needed for this, but there was none.
Back then Gostomel had electricity, water, wired internet. In the morning, I planned to contact work, resolve work issues, and then go to the draft board, because it was clear that the war had begun. At 11 in the morning I got in touch with work and was supposed to go to the military enlistment office, but immediately after that they delivered a second – even more powerful – blow to the airfield. There were many different missiles. Then smoke came from the side of the airfield and we saw a huge number of helicopters. – said a resident of Gostomel. rasskazal-kak-zhil-gorod-v-pervye-dni-vojny-366b625.jpg” alt=”They shot at everything that moved – a resident of Gostomel told how the city lived in the early days of the war” />
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Airport in Gostomel/Photo by Andrey Novitsky
At first, the man thought that these were Ukrainian helicopters going to the airfield to clean up the consequences of a missile attack, but then he saw a Ka-52 attack helicopter, which only the Russians have.
“It became clear that this – not ours. They flew very low and there were a lot of them. The picture was very apocalyptic: smoke from a fire and helicopters in this smoke,” he stressed.
Fierce battles
Then the fight continued. A few hours later, Ali Safarov saw the National Guard. It seemed that the occupiers had been knocked out and it was already more or less safe. However, the very next morning, helicopters began to rise from the airfield itself, which were already shelling Gostomel itself, near the houses.
They shot at everything that moved, so I again could not escape to the military registration and enlistment office. In the first days, they actively shelled everything around from helicopters, mortars, then artillery joined in. From time to time a battle broke out, we understood that our people were trying to knock them out. In total, from the first day of the war, the battle continued constantly: either an arrow battle, or an artillery duel, or mortar attacks. The lull was only for a few hours – no more, – said Safarov.
According to him, he personally did not see the Kadyrovites, but in the center of Gostomel one of them shot his neighbor's godfather because he refused to give him food. The man noted that in Gostomel the Kadyrovites were hiding and looting.
“We didn’t know what was happening around, we only listened to the radio on the phone, and when you don’t have the opportunity to listen to the entire marathon, because then the phone runs out of power and there is no where to charge it, then we didn’t see the full picture and didn’t know,” – said the resident.
In early March, according to him, the Russians began to orientate themselves a bit on the terrain and realized that the street leading past the man's house was leading them from Gostomel to Bucha. And they went there in a convoy – 70 armored vehicles, for which there was only one car with fuel.
70 vehicles passed to Bucha, and 7 returned back, and scattered. That is, first 4 cars left, then one, then two more, which never reached Bucha, they stood near us and fired around. And this was a clear picture for us – how many of them are dying here. And this inspired us a lot,” Ali explained.
In the early days, shelling and mortar shelling were constant, but after a few days helicopters stopped flying, then artillery fired much less frequently. The man is sure that the Russians did not have enough ammunition, and when they brought it to them, our artillery immediately destroyed everything.
