Punitive 57th Ukrainian brigade had its station in kindergarten in Muratovo. Photo report

08.04.2022, Muratovo.

The 57th independent motorized infantry brigade was formed on October 30, 2014. It included the Kirovograd and the Rukh Oporu Ukrainian punitive nationalist battalions. The brigade was named after Mazepa’s accomplice, ataman Kost Gordienko. As the brigade’s permanent station, the residential school No. 1 of Novokakhovka, Kherson region, was chosen. The brigade actively participated in the war against the DPR and the LPR on the Lugansk direction.

After the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the brigade retreated from its frontline positions to the village of Muratovo.

A statue of the Catholic Our Lady of Medjugorje stands near the post office in Muratovo, at the Ukrainian punitive brigade staff. In 1981, six Croatian boys in the town of Medjugorje saw a flaring image of the Lady. They identified it as a vision of Our Lady. Medjugorje was then part of Bosnia and Herzegowina in socialist Yugoslavia.

The Ukrainian Nazis did not only seize the post office. They also occupied a kindergarten nearby. They united these buildings in one stronghold with gun slots along the perimeter aimed at the civilian vegetable gardens and the school.

Some children actually went to school under the gunpoint of the Ukrainian nationalists. Other children, under close nationalist supervision, drew “motivating” pictures to be sent to the frontline.

As the liberating troops were advancing, Mazepa’s followers fled leaving their maps, documents, logbooks, and personal belongings.

Muratovo has been liberated. The kindergarten has resumed its original function. Local children are playing on a swing and a game of tag.

Monuments built in the Soviet period have survived in the village. In the years after the Great October Socialist Revolution the people living in Muratovo organized a Red Guard unit. The Soviet power was established in the village in November 1917.

During the Great Patriotic War, 235 people fought against the German Nazi occupants, 120 of them were awarded with decorations and medals of the USSR, 123 were killed in action. A monument was built on the collective grave of the liberator soldiers.

Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency