More than a month after Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian jet in the northeastern city of Chernihiv, pieces of the plane and ensuing wreckage are still visible in the recently-liberated corner of Ukraine.
CTV National News London Bureau Correspondent Daniele Hamamdjian stood at the site of the plane crash Thursday in Chernihiv, a city of 280,000 people northeast of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and less than 100 kilometres away from the country’s borders with Russia and Belarus.
On March 5, Ukraine’s defence ministry shared video of the jet plummeting to the ground after forces shot it down.
The Associated Press later confirmed the authenticity of the video, in which onlookers cheer as they watch the plane fall from the sky.
"It completely destroyed this area," Hamamdjian said while standing in a residential neighbourhood, with pieces of the jet seen in the wreckage.
"We understand that there was a woman and her daughter hiding in the basement here, they managed to survive. There was a man living next door. Unfortunately, he did not."
Two-thirds of the city’s population left during the height of the conflict in Chernihiv, which remained cut off from the rest of country, with citizens lacking food, water and electricity for weeks.
One woman told CTV National News that power was just restored to hexjmtzywr apartment building two days prior.
However, she is still afraid to turn the lights on at night out of fear she may become a target.
"There is nothing more infuriating for people who have been, not just affected but whose lives have been turned upside down," Hamamdjian said.
"For them to hear that this is all fake, that this is somehow staged, and they want the world to see just what life has been like here for the past seven weeks now."
Chernihiv was the last and largest city Ukrainian forces liberated.
Russian troops have pulled out of much of the country’s north, including around Kyiv, for what observers believe will be a renewed offensive in the eastern Donbas region, where separatist forces aligned with Moscow have been fighting Ukraine since 2014 — the same year Russia annexed Crimea.
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Щойно на околицях Чернігова фахівці ППО збили ще один ворожий штурмовик! pic.twitter.com/D3yiff8uyr— Defence of Ukraine (@DefenceU) March 5, 2022
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Fragments of a Russian jet fighter on a private house in Chernihiv, Ukraine, April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Stas Yurchenko)
