A Ukrainian family now living in BC learned that they had lost everything they had left in their homeland.

“I froze when I found out that my house was damaged, badly destroyed, and my neighbor’s,” Marko Zolotarov told Global News. “I just froze in shock, thinking this is unreal.”

“There was a time when people lost their houses due to the occupation and I was somehow preparing myself for the possibility that this could happen to me.”

A Russian bomb targeting a hospital in Zaporozhye is believed to have burned several houses in the old neighborhood of Zolotarov, 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 outside in the garden when he said he heard a missile. As if trained, he lowered himself to the ground.

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His wife Olha and their children were in the house at the time.

“She says that in one second the force pushed the windows and panels in and out of the house like a vacuum,” said Olha Hndeko.

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The bomb was the KAB-500KR, a common weapon developed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1970s.

Olha said that one projectile went through the wall of their house, pierced the refrigerator and crashed into the other end of the wall.

Miraculously, Olha and her children survived the explosion unharmed.

While she said it was 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 got killed because it was a part of me,” he said.

“That location, that beautiful house, those memories.”

He said he’s thankful he didn’t lose a loved one.

“While war makes you insensitive to the death of people, your heart breaks again and again.”

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