Russia Left This Ukrainian Village 90% Mined. Here’s What Life There Looks Like Now

Oct 05, 2026 17:37

8 min read

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Authors

Daria Luhova

Journalist

This is how 71-year-old Liudmyla Oparko remembers the day that changed her life forever.

Born in Hrakove, a village just an hour from the city of Kharkiv, Liudmyla left her home just once—during the occupation in 2022. Russian forces seized the village in the first days of the full-scale invasion. 

Hrakove was liberated in September 2022 during Ukraine’s counteroffensive. But as Russian forces withdrew, they did everything they could to make life there impossible even after liberation: 90% of Hrakove’s territory was mined.

What the Ukrainian village looks like now 

Kharkiv region “greets” us with anti-drone nets. That is when you know that the threat becomes real—theoretically, a Russian FPV drone could appear above us at any moment.

After almost seven hours on the road from Kyiv, the sign marking Hrakove finally comes into view in the middle of endless fields. The first building we see is almost completely destroyed. It is a school. We realize this from a partially intact sign: “With love for the child, with respect…” for whom, exactly, is left to guess.

As we get closer, we see traces of the life that was once here—scattered notebooks and schoolbooks.

A little farther on is what could loosely be called the center of the village. A church covered in bullet marks immediately catches the eye.

“The priest repaired it last year, but he hasn’t finished everything yet,” a local resident tells me. “Before that, there wasn’t even a roof.”

Nearby is one of the village’s two stores. OSB boards cover the damaged windows and parts of the storefront.

“We even have Georgian energy drinks, and regular lemonades too,” saleswoman Viktoriia says excitedly.

For a small village where not a single building around is fully intact, the selection is genuinely impressive. There are even freshly baked pies and chebureki on the counter.

“Civilization has come back to us. You can even pay by card,” the locals say.

Behind the store is a park—though not quite the kind of park we usually imagine. Among the overgrown, churned-up ground are a couple of swings and a slide.

“Now that it’s been cleared of mines, at least we’re not afraid to let the children go there,” Viktoriia says.

Yes, there are children living in Hrakove. Around 30 of them. The village is home to about 200 people in total. Some are internally displaced people from other towns and villages in Kharkiv and Donetsk regions. Before the full-scale war, around 800 people lived here, says village head Anatolii Korovkin.

How Hrakove survived Russian occupation in 2022

By pure chance, we meet another Liudmyla—Liudmyla Sukhodolska. She rides past us on a bicycle, the most common form of transport among the few locals we see. After a brief conversation, she invites us into her yard.

“Look, you can see the apple tree has a good crop,” Liudmyla says, pointing it out.

A little farther on, we see a field bordering her yard.

“This is where the Russians had a medical vehicle,” she says.

“Over there, they had seven vehicles loaded with shells. They also had a vehicle standing right there by my garage,” she continues, pointing in another direction. “Their radio station was over there. It was constantly humming. There was this thick black cable, five rows of it like this.”

She pauses before continuing.

“They shelled the school, the village council, the clinic—everything. That’s how it was. We were surrounded.”

The woman spent almost four months under the Russian occupation.

Oparko calls the Russian occupation “a living hell.”

“The well is right over there,” she says, pointing. “The Russians walked around with assault rifles all day. I would look out through the gate and, if it seemed like they weren’t there, I would immediately run to get a bucket of water.”

Her eyes fill with tears as she remembers.

“The next day they came and immediately took our phones. I begged them, ‘I need to call my son so he knows I’m alive.’ And he said, ‘You have half a minute,’ and then literally tore the phone out of my hands.”

How the village returned to a safer life 

After the village was liberated, the situation in Hrakove was the worst in the entire district, Korovkin says.

“Electricity and gas were restored here later, and people returned later too, because the mine threat was extremely serious. My son-in-law removed 200 petal mines from the yard.”

In addition to petal mines, unexploded shells and cluster munitions were also found, the man says.

“There was also a case when residents wanted to plant potatoes. One man went out with a scythe to mow the grass, and the scythe exploded.”

At the very spot where we are speaking with Anatolii, deminers also found a highly dangerous device.

Right here, near the trees, a MON-50  anti-personnel mine had been aimed at the store for four years, where everyone passes by. The store has already been operating for two years. All these bushes used to be here, it was completely overgrown. They were mowing and clearing the area when they found it. So, probably, it was set up for remote detonation rather than a tripwire. Thank God.

Anatolii Korovkin

Head of Hrakove village

Hrakove has now been cleared of mines. The fundraising campaign was launched by UNITED24 on April 4, 2025, on Mine Awareness Day.

The demining of 58 hectares took a little more than six months. During that time, sappers removed around 200 mines and more than 600 other explosive devices.

Everyone I spoke to in the village says the same thing: life has changed dramatically.

“We used to be afraid to take even one step to the right or left. It was frightening. We could only walk along paths, only where people had already walked,” Viktoriia recalls. “It was even scary to go to the cemetery.”

Another resident remembers:

“We were even afraid to let the dogs outside. Cows were blown up, dogs were blown up. There’s still one injured dog running around here. But now we feel safe.”

Life in Hrakove goes on

Despite everything they have been through, the residents continue trying to live their lives.

Liudmyla Oparko says she can barely put weight on her injured leg and now walks only with a cane.

“I depend entirely on my children. I can’t do anything on my own, like move around the yard and the house,” she says through tears.

Her son helps her keep going. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he was also wounded during the attack on Kharkiv.

“Shrapnel went right through him. One piece got stuck in his kidney, tore it apart, and doctors had to remove it. I kept going only for him.”

Sukhodolska, meanwhile, says she still has things to do in her garden every day. Right now, she says, she is preserving tomatoes.

“Russian troops were stationed here, and we still planted our gardens,” she says with a laugh. “They bomb us, and we plant our gardens. So we don’t give up.”

The residents hope that after the war, the village will be fully rebuilt and people will return to live there.

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