A Ukrainian family now living in British Columbia has learned they have lost everything they left behind in their home country.
“I was frozen when I found out that my house had been damaged, severely destroyed, and my neighbor's,” Marko Zolotarov told Global News. “I was paralyzed by shock, thinking this is unreal.”
A look at a before and after image of Marko Zolotarov's house in Ukraine, where he lived with his wife and children.
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“There was a time when people lost their homes due to the occupation and in a way I was preparing myself that the same thing could happen to me too.”
A Russian bomb that targeted a hospital in Zaporizhzhia is believed to have incinerated several houses in the former Zolotarov neighborhood, killing a 17-year-old boy.
“I was 17 when I came to Canada around that time and he's gone,” Zolotarov said.
His neighbor, Yaroslav Hndeko, was in his yard when he said he heard the missile. As he was trained, he fell to the ground.
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His wife Olha and their children were inside the house at the time.
“He says that in one second the force pushed windows and panels in and out of the house like a vacuum cleaner,” Olha Hndeko said.
Marko Zolotarov's family now lives in BC
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The bomb was a KAB-500KR, a common weapon developed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1970s.
Olha said a missile went through the side of his house, went through the refrigerator and lodged in the other end of the wall.
Miraculously, Olha and her children survived the explosion unharmed.
While he called it a traumatic incident, Zolotarov said the bombing severed his only childhood connection to Ukraine.
“When the house was destroyed I felt like a part of me was destroyed because it is a part of me,” he said.
“That place, that beautiful house, those memories.”
He said he's grateful he didn't lose a loved one.
“As war makes you desensitized to people dying, your heart breaks again and again.”
A look at the damage inside a house in Ukraine.
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