Older people aired their grief and their grievances to anyone who would listen as they picked up plastic bags of food aid. Recollections were frequently accompanied by tears from men and women, young and old. One elderly woman, wearing a bright green headscarf and brandishing a curved wooden walking stick, was incapable of answering questions, simply repeating in a wailing voice: “Woe! Woe! Woe!”

Tamara and Petro Lysenko, a married couple in their 60s, gave a tour of their handsome cottage on the central street. Russian soldiers had broken in and lived there for several weeks while the Lysenkos cowered in a cellar with relatives.

The Russians ate all the food, killed a piglet and several chickens, stole the washing machine and all of Petro’s clothes and a computer, smashed up the three family cars and daubed Z symbols in orange paint on the side of the fridge and the kitchen door…

After killing the six men on the first day, the Russians staged at least one more mass killing during their time in the village, according to Maksym Didyk, who spent 12 days tied up and blindfolded in a small outhouse across the road from the school after being grabbed at a checkpoint on 19 March and beaten by Russians who demanded information about Ukrainian positions.