A true hero of Ukraine

He saved more than 60 people who huddled into his basement for months, to hide from Russian bombardment. The story of a strong and generous man - and a real Ukrainian hero.

Andriy Pleshan is a real life Ukrainian hero. A wiry, modest looking man in his sixties, he saved more than sixty people by hiding them for months in the old basement below his house in Izyum, while the Russians relentlessly bombarded the city around them. Izyum, a strategically important town in Kharkiv region, has been left battered and scarred by the ferocity of the fighting and the unspeakable war crimes which the Russian army committed there. Entire blocks of flats have been torn in two, homes turned into great, gaping chasms, forever frozen in time. There are ugly holes gouged out of walls, blackened and charred by fire. Thousands of people have fled Izyum, but thousands have returned, and Andriy, who goes by Yurich to his friends, still has his basement, right in the centre of town, and volunteers he has befriended who are travelling through the east, are sometimes invited to stay.    

The battered house in Izyum

Back the terrible days when the fighting was at its worst, the basement was freezing cold and dark: there was no electricity or water supply, and just one rudimentary toilet which those sixty people all had to share. The youngest was a two month old baby - the oldest was a pensioner of ninety. There were dogs and cats to take care of too. When the shelling got so intense that a 24 hour curfew was imposed, it was impossible to go out at all. They fed the baby on formula milk and Yurich showed us how they had put bottles of water under their shirts in an effort to warm them up. 

For three months there was nowhere to get more food, just whatever they could find by foraging through other ruined homes. There was no light, so they fashioned candles out of potatoes and cooking oil with a wick made from wood, to provide the merest flickering flame.  And somehow, as artillery shells and grad missiles tore chunks out of the asphalt and the walls outside, down in that old basement those sixty people stayed alive. 

‘People live here’

More than a year after Izyum was liberated, the gates outside Yurich’s home were still daubed with the slogan ‘Zhivut Lyudi’, or ‘People Live Here’, and there were huge piles of boxes lining the steps down to the heavy basement door. The building looked half destroyed, roof shattered, walls pockmarked by shrapnel, the windows just gaping holes. But below ground, the basement was brightly lit and the walls were covered in icons and patriotic posters, while a giant TV screen was playing the non-stop news channel United Marathon. On a wide couch, covered in patterned blankets, several dogs were dozing as the television played grainy war footage on an endless loop. A black and white cat had taken up residence in the warmest spot in the place, as cats do, hogging the chair next to a wood fired stove, while a kettle boiled away, ready for tea. There was a long table, which the volunteers covered with boxes of food, bread and potato salad and salami, small knobbly cucumbers and big fat ripe tomatoes for a late night meal. Yurich darted off to a store cupboard and returned with some jars of pickles, exclaiming ‘Domashne - home made!” and sliced up some cured pork fat onto a plate. There were several bottles of Ukrainian vodka and some home brewed alcohol, ready for the inevitable toasts: to victory, to those who had lost their lives, to the armed forces of Ukraine.

Spot the cat in the warmest seat…

It was impossible to imagine what conditions had been like down there, during those long, terrible months in the dark and cold, when so many people were huddled together in fear. Yurich rummaged through his ‘souvenirs’ and pulled out some copies of a Russian military newspaper which the occupiers had scattered around, Krasnaya Zvezda or Red Star. Once propaganda, now part of a display at Izyum’s Museum of Occupation. Or kindling for the fire.

In the morning, dogs weaving eagerly around his feet, Yurich made strong coffee with his jezve coffee pot, and brought out an enormous vat of local honey. He rummaged through his store cupboard again, reappearing with several bars of milk chocolate studded with hazelnuts, which he insisted on giving to everyone for the road. An incredibly generous and courageous man who has lived through so many horrors and has kept on fighting: a true hero of Ukraine.