3 Years On: Fragments of the Battle for Kyiv
In January 2022, the United States released information indicating Russia was preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Disagreements between allies and subsequent denials from the Ukrainian government added to the confusion, but in the aftermath, a clearer picture emerged of how the battle had played out.
Using eyewitness accounts and images collected from villagers living west of Kyiv, we retell the story of those first weeks, when the world’s second largest army arrived at the doorstep of many quiet and once peaceful villages.
During the 2022 battle for Kyiv, Russian forces took several villages north and west of the capital during their attempt to encircle the city. Civilians in villages captured by the Russian military were tortured and executed in a systemic and horrible manner; dozens upon dozens of bodies would be discovered after liberation. Russian forces became bogged down literally and figuratively, facing heavy resistance and seasonal muds called bezdorizhzhya (which translates literally to ‘roadlessness’). The invasion machine crawled to a near halt on the outskirts of Kyiv. Decisive fighting for the capital took place in the small villages that lie to Kyiv’s southwest. The tiny area near the village of Yasnohorodka, where OffBeat Research’s Nizar Al-Rifai is based, lay vulnerable just beyond the edge of the Russian advance.
Now, every corner of the war in Ukraine has been mapped, in stark contrast to the fog of war which existed in spring of 2022. A fighter who spoke with OffBeat Research recently said current maps are so accurate that even the precise position of his machine gun nest was correctly depicted. As the invasion played out in February, though, it was absolute chaos, mappable only via first-person perspective and informal technique.
OffBeat’s Nizar Al-Rifai and Patrick Hilsman were in communication between New York City and Kyiv Oblast during the first days and weeks of the full-scale invasion. The conversations gravitated between the trivial and the grave, discussing the murder of neighbors in the devastated villages only a few kilometers away.
Al-Rifai struggled with what was best to do. The Russians were killing people who fled the nearby villages and towns. He worried about the health of his family, including his grandfather and his younger brother. He felt compelled to stay for the sake of his home, a self-sustaining solar-powered oasis in the war, wondering what the Russians would do if they captured it.
The Russians entered Kyiv Oblast with an absolute numerical advantage, but bad planning and stiff Ukrainian resistance ultimately turned back the invaders. Brutal battles with high-intensity combat took place from the end of February 2022 to the end of March 2022. Back then it was very dynamic – Very close quarters and in the middle of a large civilian population.
From the end of February 2022 to the end of March 2022, during the pivotal first weeks of the Russian full-scale invasion, a battle played out for control of the rural villages west and south-west of Kyiv. Russian forces occupied the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin, leaving hundreds of civilians in mass graves and makeshift torture chambers.
By early March, the Russian military had taken full control over the village of Motyzhyn, and attempted to storm the village of Yasnohorodka, as well the city of Byshiv. The Ukrainian military soon mobilized armor to try and push the Russians out.
The village of Osykove was spared the worst of the fighting, but was struck by a Russian missile which damaged construction equipment, and hit by shelling that heavily damaged a civilian home. Another home was slightly damaged by falling debris from an intercepted Russian cruise missile.
Eight weeks after the invasion, Hilsman and Al-Rifai reunited in Kyiv and recorded some aspects of daily life in the still shell-shocked villages in the area just outside of Yasnohorodka.
In June, 2022, the journalists conducted a series of interviews with local residents and officials, recounting their experiences during the battle.
With Russians encroaching, and the area increasingly coming under direct fire, locals looked for a way out. With limited information amid the fog of war, and with GPS nonfunctional or faulty at best, planning an escape was a potentially deadly leap of faith. Some civilians planned their escape via the road connecting Motyzhn and Yasnohorodka, but the Russians had already stationed vehicles on the road to prevent civilians from fleeing.
The Russian military was confused in its purpose. It was later revealed that some of the soldiers had not been told they were going to Ukraine until immediately before the invasion itself. Amid this confusion, it became a matter of luck as to whether the Russians would immediately target fleeing cars or ignore them. In one instance, Russian BMPs in Motyzhn were filmed swiveling their turrets towards civilians filming them on their phones. Others were not so lucky, with civilian vehicles destroyed and littered across the last possible escape route, which was soon referred to as “the road of death.” The Russians left behind traces of which units may have been responsible, including marked weapons crates. Here, the OffBeat Team found the remains of a Russian unit, its destroyed vehicles, and some of its equipment marked with the number 55443-44 (manufactured at the Tula Weapon Factory and addressed to 601010 Kirzhach city, Vlodimirska oblast).
Remnants of a destroyed Russian BMP. // Photo credit: Nizar al-Rifai
In the neighboring town of Makariv, a Russian BMP was recorded firing its 30mm automatic cannon at a civilian vehicle with an elderly couple inside. The vehicle was shredded to pieces along with its occupants. These types of violations were recorded numerous times across the entirety of the Kyiv region during the initial stage of the Russian advance. We recorded multiple destroyed civilian vehicles in the aftermath, including a car where, per locals, a father and son were killed by Russian forces.
With all these factors to consider, and little information to go on, Al-Rifai struggled with what to do as the sounds of fighting grew louder and closer. Several times, Al-Rifai and his family saw missiles fly upwards for interceptions but was unsure whose side they were on during the battle. In the fog of war, what sounded like a menacing enemy machine often eventually turned out to be Ukrainian anti-air forces intercepting cruise missile launches in the area.
Artem, a son of Al-Rifai’s neighbor, holds a piece of the downed Russian Kalibr missile which hit his family’s house. // Photo credit: Nizar al-Rifai
A neighbor’s son, Artem, saw an explosion and falling debris, which struck his house. When interviewed after fighting, he said that he was happy that an intercepted cruise missile had landed on his house, instead of continuing on to harm people. During the course of fighting, his mother also slept in the stables with her cows so they would not be too scared of the surrounding explosions and gunfure. It was not uncommon to hear stories of locals who walked long distances on foot with their cattle to escape the fighting.
“After a while even the cows got used to the explosions,” according to Artem’s mother, who would regularly comfort the cows during periods of intensive conflict. // Photos credit: Nizar al-Rifai
“The debris fell on the barn and we were afraid it would start a hay fire,” explained Artem. “We pulled the smoldering wreckage out so the fire wouldn’t spread. I’m happy the debris hit us specifically and that it didn’t fall on a neighbor’s house, and that it didn’t kill anybody, these were my first thoughts and emotions. I was happy, I was happy that this missile didn’t do harm to anyone.”
Artem repairs damage from the downed Russian missile. // Photo credit: Nizar al-Rifai
With no way to know for sure whether the Russians were advancing or retreating, or even where they were, Al-Rifai had to make choices based on limited info. Should he risk being killed, or having his family killed, in an attempt to escape the area, or hunker down? Should he put the life of his family in the hands of Russian mercy or incompetence, or should he wait for a miracle?
The Liberation of Motyzhyn
For the civilians trapped in Motyzhyn – those remaining who had not been taken hostage or massacred while in hiding – there was no clear picture of what was happening outside. Locals heard Tatar fighters shouting Allahu akbar, and knew they had been liberated. Some of the first videos of the liberation of Motyzhn to surface online were posted by Muslim Crimea Battalion fighters. They were greeted by grateful locals who cheered them on to keep hitting the Russians.
During the occupation, Al-Rifai’s family was still in touch with relatives in Motyzhn who had witnessed the horrors of Russian occupation first hand. These same relatives would later flee under direct fire from the soldiers who had been holding them prior to their escape. Other relatives were not so lucky, and were executed with their bodies showing visible signs of torture.
Throughout the course of the battle, the Russians maintained numerical superiority, but the Ukrainian fighters were highly motivated. With their occupation solidified in Motyzhn, and with Russian forces using the local population as human shields, they started trying to push towards Osykove and Yasnohorodka. Locals said the line between Osykove and Mohtyzn was held by a handful of fighters, and Russian armor got bogged down in seasonal mud. The first days of fighting were fluid and fast-evolving, before the war would change into something more akin to trench warfare.
The Russians tried to force their way down the road of death between Motyzhn and Yasnohorodka, where they were met with stiff local resistance. A beloved local priest, still in his vestments, was killed at a local territorial defense checkpoint. According to witnesses, he was shot while walking towards the Russians with his cross raised.
Another town that bore the brunt of the Russian invasion was Byshiv, which was heavily bombed. Ground forces also tried to push from occupied Makariv. When we visited Byshiv, most of the facades in the city center were damaged, and a son and father were killed in the attack, which was ultimately repelled.
Patrick Hilsman and Dylan Burns survey destruction incurred by Russian bombardment in the town of Byshiv. // Photo credit: Nizar al-Rifai
The area sprung back to life so quickly that the local stores received new stocks of Red Bull, while around the corner entire segments of the village were still damaged. In other shops, whole parts of the buildings were missing, with boards covering damage alongside other makeshift repairs.
Three years after the battle, OffBeat discovered another ominous sign of how far the Russian military had made it. Local accounts indicated that a Russian recon group had been wiped out in the forest between Osykove and Yasnohorodka during the first weeks of battle. In 2025, a skull was found deeper in the forest than it had been previously understood that Russians had advanced. The skull bears a visible bullet wound, another dramatic sign of the frantic battle that took place three years ago outside Kyiv.
On the three year anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion, two of Al-Rifai’s close family friends were killed in a Russian Shahed drone striking their house, leaving their children behind. The family had previously survived many of the same events that rocked the Bucha region of Kyiv Oblast in 2022. Their house was damaged in earlier fighting, only for them to be killed in a strike in the early hours of the morning.
These scenes on the outskirts of Kyiv showcase the resilience of Ukrainians in the face of potential abandonment, something which will not change regardless of the new administration’s stance on the conflict. Ukraine will continue fighting for their future.
Scenes from life in and around the towns in Kyiv oblast. // Photos credit: Nizar al-Rifai
