7 | The patient is in yellow. Photo from the project "It’s a Mad, Mad World". Ukraine, Borodyanka | 2022.
Borodyanka is a quiet town with a population of 13,000. It is located on the road to Kyiv. In 1240, the city was destroyed by the Mongol-Tatars, but later it was rebuilt. In 2022, the Russians turned Borodyanka into ruins.
Most of the buildings in the city were destroyed. 8 multi-story buildings were destroyed, 32 were damaged. About 950 private houses were destroyed and damaged. As a result of airstrikes, residents were buried alive, many lay dying in the streets for weeks, as the Russians did not allow rescue services. Hundreds killed and missing.
The city was under occupation for a month. The Russians took over the local psychiatric boarding school, which housed about 500 patients, several employees and no doctors. Russian soldiers set up their positions on the territory of the psychiatric hospital and mined the area around the hospital. Boarding house residents became a living shield for them.
Military reality invaded the measured life of psychiatric hospital patients. This negatively affected the condition of patients.
People with a traumatized psyche were left in the boarding house without water, food, electricity, heating and proper care, many of them bedridden for years. Patients died from cold, stress and lack of medicine.
The temperature inside the building dropped to minus 7 degrees Celsius. There was no running water in the hospital. People drank water from the lake and got diarrhea.
Local residents who lost their homes sought salvation in the boarding school, among them were the wounded and the dying.
13 people died during the occupation. They were buried on the territory of a psychoneurological boarding school. The director of the boarding school and his assistant buried the dead patients with their own hands. On March 13, international organizations evacuated patients and medical personnel. Patients moved to different regions of Ukraine, more than 20 patients died, not being able to settle in a new place.