Ukrainian refugee in UK spots family’s possessions on top of Russian tank

A Ukrainian refugee in the UK has said she recognised her boiler and bedsheets being looted from her home by Russian soldiers in a photo.

Alina Koreniuk, a policewoman from Popasna in the Donbas region, left Ukraine with her children in early April and is staying with a British couple in Nottinghamshire under the Homes for Ukrainians scheme.

The picture, taken recently, shows a tank laden with cardboard boxes and blankets rolling past bombed-out residential buildings in the town, which was captured by Russian forces on May 8.

Koreniuk says one of the boxes in the photograph contains the new boiler that she bought and planned to install before the war started. Other items on the tank include a tablecloth from the family’s summer house, new Disney bedsheets for her children and a red blanket.

The bed linen was used to cover something, Koreniuk added, probably a TV or other electronic equipment, all of which had been left at the house when they were forced to leave.

 “Our reaction was that whatever they hadn’t destroyed they would steal,” she told the BBC. “We expected houses in Popasna to be looted, we’d been told many times about this.”

The family took few of their possessions when they left. Her mother was forced to leave behind a pet dog, which was killed either by shrapnel or by the occupying forces.

Koreniuk has been staying in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, with her daughters Kristina, 12, and Olha, 8.

Last week Mediazona, an independent Russian news site, published a report suggesting that Russian troops had sent home 58 tonnes of looted goods from areas close to the Ukrainian borders with Russia and Belarus since the start of the invasion.

The packages are said to contain items such as trainers, canned food, TVs, car tyres and tents.