As their car navigated its way through the rubble, the silence that filled the air was no less deafening than the explosions that preceded their arrival. Denys Berinchyk, an Olympic silver medal winner, had spent weeks delivering aid and evacuating civilians from towns and villages ravaged by Russian forces. He had ducked behind the dashboard under machinegun fire, watched shrapnel fly a few feet over his head and spent nights sleeping in abandoned homes, but even that couldn’t prepare him for the horror that awaited as he drove into Chernihiv.
“Imagine you’re talking, joking with your friends, and then you go mute,” he says. “You can’t speak because you’re so shocked by what you see. Every house, every street, every yard has been shelled by mortars