The school was a shattered mess. Its six-month life as a Russian base and mechanic shop ended in August with a Ukrainian missile strike.
Its years educating Izium's youth were over, but it had one last gift for the residents who needed so much: the wood that made up its lattice work, its chalkboards, its furniture and beams.
A handful of elderly residents — some prepared with gloves, sturdy woven bags, and hand tools — came by Monday to salvage firewood from the rubble. It will be months, if not longer, before meaningful electricity, gas and running water are restored, and a chill is already settling in.
This city in far eastern Ukraine was among the first taken by Russian forces after the war started on Feb. 24, and it became a command center for them. By early March, Izium was isolated — no cell phones, no heat, no power. Residents didn't know what was going on in the war, whether their relatives were alive, whether there was still a Ukraine.
They were liberated in a swift counteroffensive on Sept. 10 that swept through the Kharkiv region, and that continues in the south, near Kherson. But residents are still emerging from the confusion and trauma of their occupation, the brutality of which gained worldwide attention last week after the discovery of one of the war's largest mass grave sites.
“We have nothing. We are taking wood to heat water for tea and to make porridge. Look at my hands! I'm 75 years old and this woman is even older than me. We are afraid of winter,” said Oleksandra Lysenko, standing in a pile of bricks. “My grandchildren went to this school and I am looting it.”
A man nearby loaded the battered hood of a car onto his bicycle. He planned to use the part, which was spray-painted with the letter Z that has come to symbolize the Russian army, to cover an open window frame.
When the war began nearly seven months ago, about half of Izium's roughly 40,000 residents fled, some of them into Russia itself. The rest hunkered down in basements or behind the thickest walls they could find. Russian soldiers handed out some food but rarely enough.