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Safe space: In liberated Lyman, dank but familiar cellar is still home

During the months that Russian forces occupied the Ukrainian village of Lyman, up to 60 people lived underground in this musty basement of a Soviet-era apartment block, cooking on gas cylinders, lining walls with split wood for heating, and stringing up lights for moments of electricity.

Ukrainian troops liberated Lyman more than four months ago. But living underground has become a hard habit to break, especially with the front lines no more than a few miles away and Russia regularly targeting the area with artillery and rocket fire, lending a steady soundtrack of ominous explosions.

Why We Wrote This

Russian forces were driven from the Ukrainian village of Lyman months ago, but the fighting is still too close, and damage too extensive, to give many residents the confidence to return to their homes. They are finding security, and community, underground.

Some 24 people – including a teenage girl, whose New Year decorations taped to the concrete walls continue to raise spirits – still reside in the makeshift bunker. They are torn between their relatively safe but severely constricted life lived underground, and the freedom that beckons on the surface above.

“If we knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel, it would be better,” says a basement resident who gives the name Yana. “Now we go to bed each night, worried that a missile will come. It feels safer underground, but it’s still bad when your whole house is trembling above you.”

The underground basement of the Soviet-era apartment block was never meant for human habitation. At the bottom of a dingy flight of stairs, the decades-old storage area has narrow, musty corridors, unwelcoming concrete cells hung with metal doors, and an uneven dirt floor.

But when Russian invasion forces seized this town in northeast Ukraine last May – accompanied by weeks of bombardment that wrecked houses and endangered lives above ground – residents raced to the tight confines of this bunker-like sanctuary.

In the coming months of Russian occupation, up to 60 people lived down below in the fusty air, cooking on gas cylinders, lining walls with split wood for heating, and stringing up lights for moments of electricity.

Why We Wrote This

Russian forces were driven from the Ukrainian village of Lyman months ago, but the fighting is still too close, and damage too extensive, to give many residents the confidence to return to their homes. They are finding security, and community, underground.

Ukrainian troops liberated Lyman more than four months ago. But living underground has become a hard habit to break, especially with the front lines no more than a few miles away and Russia regularly targeting the area with artillery and rocket fire, lending a steady soundtrack of ominous explosions.

“Of course, we feel so tired, and apathy comes,” says Iryna Dmytrenko, the head of the residents here, who boils water in a makeshift kitchen as the rumble of a tank penetrates from above.

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