NATO Secretary General visits “basement of death” in Yahidne

According to Ukrinform, he wrote about this on the social media platform X.

Yesterday I visited Chernihiv region 🇺🇦 with @andrii_sybiha and @V_Chaus where residents told us about how they’ve been surviving the war. I saw the school basement where an entire village was held captive for a month in 2022 by Russian troops, and the Invincibility Points that… pic.twitter.com/sAt0tkycgR

— Mark Rutte (@SecGenNATO) February 5, 2026

“Yesterday, I visited Chernihiv region together with Andrii Sybiha and Viacheslav Chaus, where residents told us about how they’ve been surviving the war,” Rutte said.

The NATO Secretary General also shared that he saw the basement of a school in the village of Yahidne, where in 2022 Russian troops held local residents captive for a month, as well as local Invincibility Points that serve as resilience hubs and help keep people supplied during outages now.

“I saw how the armed forces are countering Russian drones. And I met with university students who are determined to play their part in a peaceful, prosperous future,” Rutte noted.

As reported, on March 3, 2022, Russian invaders entered Yahidne in Chernihiv Region. They forced residents out of their homes and herded them into the school basement. In total, Russian troops held 367 people in the school basement, which has an area of 197 square meters, including 50 children and several infants, the youngest just one and a half months old. Eleven residents died after being unable to withstand the inhumane conditions, and ten more were shot by the invaders.

As Ukrinform previously reported, on February 3, Mark Rutte arrived in Kyiv on a visit, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior officials, addressed the Verkhovna Rada, and visited one of Kyiv’s combined heat and power plants that had been attacked by Russia.

Photo: x.com/SecGenNATO