More than 300 residents of a city in Ukraine were locked in the basement of a school for weeks

eleven Ukrainians died in a school basement where 367 residents of the city of Iaguidné were detained for 27 days in March last year. Volodymyr Zelenskythe president of Ukraine, remembered this traumatic event while visiting the city in the north of the country.

Only ten days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian soldiers arrived in Iaguidné. The residents of the city assure that they were forced to leave their homes and drove to the basement of a local school.

“They didn’t explain anything to us. They took us underground and told us they would take us to another place later,” Ivan Polguï told AFP at a ceremony on Monday.

“They entered the houses with machine guns and forced everyone to go to the basement (of the school). They gave us five minutes to recover everything we needed,” remembers Valeri Polguï, 38, Ivan’s son.

Total, 367 people were locked in a windowless basement of 200 square meters.

“It was cold at first, but then more and more people came and there was not enough oxygen in the rooms (…). Some elderly people lost consciousness due to lack of oxygenthey went crazy and eventually they died”, said Valeri Polgui.

“When someone died, (the Russians) They did not give permission to bury him. If he died in the morning, we could take him out in the afternoon and take him (his body) to the boiler room,” said the 38-year-old Ukrainian. According to Polguï, the trapped children walked past the piled up corpses in the boiler room.

Eleven residents died in detention and their names were written in tribute on the wall and a cellar door. The children also filled the walls with drawings.

His ordeal ended with the arrival of Ukrainian soldiers on March 30.

“We were still in the basement, because everyone was afraid to go outside. We didn’t know who it was,” acknowledged Valeri Polguï.

“I hope the Russian president spends the rest of his life in a basement”

Volodimir Zelensky said on Monday that he hoped “the Russian president (Vladimir Putin) will spend the rest of his life in a basement with a bucket instead of a bathroom.” This was said at a ceremony in the town of Iaguidné.

“All these people lived in total darkness, waiting for the return of the Ukrainians. They wrote (on the walls) the names of those who died and the dates, so as not to forget,” the Ukrainian president said in his tribute, along with German vice chancellor Robert Habeck.