(Photo: Inna Lazareva/Times of Israel)
By Inna Lazareva - December 5, 2022
When Ukrainian rescue workers discovered the blasted-out hole surrounded by masses of rubble at the spot where Roman Bashenko was last seen standing, they abandoned all hope of finding him alive.
“They thought I had been… blown to pieces,” Bashenko told The Times of Israel quietly, trying to choose his words carefully as he glanced at his wife sitting on the terrace of Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital.
Ordinarily a policeman from Dnipro who had previously served in Donbas in 2014, Bashenko was drafted to serve in the war following Russia’s invasion earlier this year.
In the early hours of July 27, a Russian guided missile tore through the building in the city of Bakhmut, Donbas region, where he was stationed. The city has been the target of relentless Russian attacks over the past six months, and, with almost constant gunfire, missile strikes, air raids as well as trench warfare, most of its 70,000 residents have fled. In recent days Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the situation in Bakhmut as “the hottest, most painful.” “Everyone there deserves the highest gratitude!” Zelensky added.
Read More: Times of Israel