The elderly and sick died quietly.
Crowded with hundreds of others held captive by Russian soldiers for four weeks in an airless, unsanitary school basement in Yahidne, a village in the Chernihiv region of northern Ukraine, the ill and the frail were particularly vulnerable.
Several could not withstand the lack of medicine, food, fresh air, and overall comfort in the dark, stuffy rooms they shared with more than 300 other captives of the invading forces, survivors said.
