(10 Nov 2022)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lisne, Kharkiv region - 10 November 2022
1. Dog walking through abandoned zoo premises
2. Various of damaged zoo buildings and debris
3. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Alexander Feldman, zoo founder:
"Literally risking their lives, crawling - can you imagine - such an area to crawl through? Women and the elderly. Crawled into the cages. Dogs we had, they originally weighed 80-90 kilogrammes, we took them and they weighed 30-40 kilogrammes. Some of the animals did not receive any food or water for weeks, so it was scary. Those guys we found in the bathroom, they each had two buckets in their hands: one had carrots and the other had two or three kilos of dog food. That's what they were armed with, so they had to be killed."
4. Various of buffalo in enclosure
5. SOUNDBITE (Ukrainian) Vitali Ilchenko, zoo director:
"When we evacuated them from the territory of Zaozerye to the park, we came under fire and left them in the cage. Heavy shelling, trees were falling, the territory of the cage was destroyed, and they came out, they escaped. And we heard about them for a couple of days after that - there, there, there in the forests, and then they disappeared from sight. There were five of them. Two were killed, and two - pregnant mothers - gave birth to babies. Children of war."
6. Various of buffalo in enclosure
STORYLINE:
A pack of buffalo from a zoo in Ukraine's Kharkiv region escaped the facility when it was shelled by Russian forces, but later came back with calves born in the woods.
Feldman Ecopark was one of the most popular places for recreation in the Kharkov region. Entrance was free, and free buses from the centre of Kharkov ran there during peacetime.
There were over 5,000 animals in the ecopark, including rare and exotic ones.
In the spring of 2022, there was fierce fighting in the area and more than 300 animals died in the ecopark.
Six people also died: five zoo employees and one teenager who helped evacuate the animals. Four victims were found shot. They were trying to feed the animals under fire and were possibly shot by Russian soldiers.
The animals that survived were taken by volunteers and ecopark staff to different parts of Ukraine. According to estimates by the management of the ecopark, the facility was 95 percent destroyed.
Aviaries and buildings were destroyed, many animals died of their wounds or heart attacks, while many escaped into the woods.
The territory of the ecopark was mined - even now, after the work of sappers, the ecopark's employees find booby traps and unexploded ammunition.
During one of the animal evacuations, there was a shooting - a family of Asian buffalo escaped into the forest - the enclosure was destroyed, and a 15-year-old boy, who was a volunteer with his parents and helped with the evacuation, was seriously injured and later died in hospital.
This month, three of those same buffalo returned to the ecopark - and not by themselves, but with two calves. The two females, zoologists suggest, were pregnant at the time of the invasion.
Now the three adult buffalo and two calves are the only inhabitants of the devastated and deserted ecopark.
The founder of the eco-park, the people's deputy of Ukraine and philanthropist Alexander Feldman, considers the return of the buffaloes with their offspring as the symbolic start of the eco-park revival.
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