A Ukrainian family now living in B.C. has learned that they have lost everything they left behind in their home country.
”I froze when I learned my house got damaged, severely destroyed and my neighbour’s,” Marko Zolotarov told Global News. “I just got frozen in shock, thinking this is unreal.”
“There was (a) time when people lost their house because of occupation and I was in some way preparing myself that it can happen with me as well.”
It is believed a Russian bomb targeting a hospital in Zaporizhzhia incinerated several homes in Zolotarov ‘s old neighbourhood, killing a 17-year-old boy.
“I was 17-years-old when I came to Canada around that time and he is gone now,” Zolotarov said.
His neighbour, Yaroslav Hndeko, was outside in the garden when he said he heard the missile. As trained, he dropped to the ground.
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His wife Olha and their kids were inside the home at the time.
“She says in one second the force pushed windows and panelling in and out of the house like a vacuum,” Olha Hndeko said.
The bomb was a KAB-500KR, which is a common weapon developed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1970s.
Olha said one missile went through the side of their house, spearing the fridge and lodging itself into the other end of the wall.
Miraculously, Olha and her children survived the explosion unscathed.
While she said it was a traumatic incident, Zolotarov said the bombing severed his only childhood tie to Ukraine.
“When the house was destroyed it felt like part of me got wrecked because it’s part of me,” he said.
“That location, that beautiful house, those memories.”
He said he is grateful he didn’t lose a loved one.
“While the war makes you desensitized to the death of people, your heart breaks again and again.”
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