clearly in your story, but you ve been talking to a lot of ukrainians over the weeks about this. exactly right. i think we agree, war is about the people and it s about the personal side of it and it s not about how many s300s and how many javelins have been ordered and it is about people like taisa who you met last hour who are directly affect. i want to share about that area in borodianka about an hour from where i am in kyiv. it s on that mainakes is from belarus to kyiv. they needed and wanted to take control so they can start moving their supplies and weaponry closer to the capital of kyiv. it got hit very, very hard. so people there when we met them last week in the last couple of days they were coming up with no food, no water and no electricity and no medical care.
taisa s neighbor, she also shared with us an additional story about her family that i just want to share with you here and then we can talk about it on the back end. marina shows us around the city center there. she says after this apartment building was bombed they could hear screams for days. people underneath urgently pleading for help, but she says the russians shot anyone who tried to rescue them. i m mole. at her house she introduces us to her daughter elena. nice to meet you. i know these soldiers, she says. they re chechens fighting for russia. i was so worried they would come and rape her so we hid her under piles of clothes. so if the russians came you would be safe. yes. the soldiers came and searched their house, but didn t find elena. ali, this is the forefront of women s minds that we are talking to around these suburbs of kyiv. women who have escaped possible rape from russian soldiers,
shot in the back by russian troops as he was walking away the next morning he was dead the russians are liars, she says, they re all liars. had he grandson dmitro comes over he returned, but it was tolate how did you find out your father had died when i go here. reporter: so you came back expecting to see him? yes, yes. reporter: he s angry. it s bull [ bleep ]. all this thing is bull [ bleep ]. reporter: heading east to fight for his father [ crying ] reporter: and taisa, taking my hand. you need to have a happy life. she wants to show us pictures in her apartment. that s roman when he was little what was he like he was smart, she says he spoke english. he brought me tulips on my birthday.
birthday. she says she doesn t have any recent photos, so this is how she ll remember her boy. jose, a little context, that s 80-year-old taisa, before the war, about 12,000 people, about an hour from here. we met her almost immediately upon driving in. xi said the russian troops shot her only son in the back. he called home. he said i m sorry i let you down. she took us to see that grave. that s what she was talking about right there, jose. molly, it s so widespread and so difficult for us that aren t there to really be able to understand just how massive the destruction and the lives that have been lost, and they continue to be lost. reporter: it s overwhelming. the destruction is impactful, to see apartment buildings.
of mariupol says at least 5,000 people have been killed there, including 210 children, lester okay, richard, thank you. tonight from the same devastated town we saw in richard s report, a deeper look at the toll this war has taken on just one of so many families. molly hunter is there with a portrait of grief. [ crying ] reporter: marina waved us down as we arrived in borodyanka. it was horrific here, she says, you have no idea my neighbor had to bury her son in our backyard, she says, you have to come see. she takes us through the back gate to the shallow grave, then goes to get her neighbor taisa 80-year-old taisa has now buried both her children she says her son roman was 57 she ll rebury him in a cemetery when this is all over she tells me roman was