A Ukrainian family now living in British Columbia has learned they have lost everything they left behind in their home country.
“I froze when I learned that my house was damaged, badly destroyed, as well as my neighbor’s,” Marko Zolotarov told Global News. “I just stood there frozen in shock, thinking it was unreal.”
A look at a before and after image of Marko Zolotarov’s home in Ukraine, where he lived with his wife and children.
Provided to Global News
“There was a time when people were losing their homes due to the occupation and I was somehow preparing myself that this could happen to me too.”
A Russian bomb targeting a hospital in Zaporizhzhia is believed to have incinerated several houses in the old Zolotarov district, killing a 17-year-old boy.
“I was 17 when I came to Canada at that time and he’s not here now,” Zolotarov said.
His neighbor, Yaroslav Hndeko, was outside in the garden when he said he heard the missile. As if trained, he fell to the ground.
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His wife Olha and their children were inside the house at the time.
“She says in one second the force caused the windows and panels of the house to move in and out like a vacuum,” Olha Hndeko said.
Marko Zolotarov’s family now lives in British Columbia
Provided to Global News
The bomb was a KAB-500KR, a common weapon developed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1970s.
Olha said a missile flew through the side of their house, piercing the refrigerator and lodging itself in the other end of the wall.
Miraculously, Olha and her children survived the explosion unharmed.
While maintaining that it was a traumatic incident, Zolotarov said the attack severed his only childhood connection to Ukraine.
“When the house was destroyed, I felt like a part of me was destroyed because it was a part of me,” he said.
“This place, this beautiful house, these memories.”
He said he was grateful not to have lost a loved one.
“As war makes you numb to people’s deaths, your heart breaks again and again. »
A look at the damage inside a house in Ukraine.
Provided to Global News
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