** Ukraine: veterinary Chernihiv, ‘for weeks alone under bombs with 50 dogs, half dead’ **

For over a month trapped under bombs in the veterinary center in Chernihiv, with fifty dogs, 27 of which died. It is the story of Tatiana Didenko, a forty-year-old veterinarian and founder of the animal shelter of the Ukrainian city on the border with Belarus for weeks under siege by the Russian army. “The center will be four years old this summer. It was I who opened it and it is my responsibility. For this – says the doctor at Adnkronos – when the war broke out I decided to stay and also when my family proposed me to flee, I refused: I could not even imagine being able to abandon the animals. Without me, they could have starved or killed each other “. On the other hand, it was the shock that killed 26 of the 27 dogs that died during the attack. “The center is located right in the area where the fighting took place, we were practically always under fire”, explains Tatiana, who for over two weeks was completely alone with the animals in the shelter, hit by four rockets between 8 and on March 28. The founder remembers each of those moments perfectly, but in particular “March 15 – she says – is a date that I will not forget for the rest of my life: in the morning I saw an unmanned plane flying over the center and in the evening another aircraft took off. dropped a rocket in our yard, very close to the cages. A big fire broke out and I had to put it out in every way, to avoid burning the animals, the clinic and everything else. ” the feeling of helplessness in seeing dogs go mad, suffer and die slowly. Not that it is not difficult to see an animal die from its wounds, but the psychological ones died slowly and this hurt me so much. ” For this there is nothing that angers the vet more than “hearing those who say that animals in a war are the last to think about. These people should witness their death and understand what it feels like.” they withdrew from the north and the situation in Chernihiv has been improving, another emergency has begun for the veterinary center: that of the many dogs and cats left by those who fled the war. “During the month of the siege, no more than one or two animals a week arrived at the shelter, then in just two days twenty arrived. Today we have 260 animals, 200 dogs and 60 cats, with a maximum capacity of 180” To cope with overcrowding, the center has decided to take in only animals with injuries that need specialists. “We explain to people how to take care of animals with mild problems at home and those that we believe can survive on their own, we free them, because unfortunately we cannot keep them all”, says the founder of the veterinary center, also involved in rabies vaccination and sterilization. mass of dogs and cats of Chernihiv, to prevent the number of strays from increasing further.