Have Russians set up a military base in my childhood home?

It was another busy working day.

Russian forces had attacked again in my hometown of Zaporizhia: a region in southern Ukraine divided between Russian occupiers who claim everything as their own and Ukrainians who defend it.

I was feeling nostalgic as I sat in my office in central London. I decided to take a quick look at the latest satellite images of my childhood village – poetically named Verkhnya Krynytsya (or Upper Spring in English), in the Russian-occupied part of the region, just a few kilometers from the front lines.

I could see familiar dirt tracks and houses drowning in lush vegetation. But something caught my eye.

Amid the apparent silence of the small village I remembered so well, a new feature had emerged: a well-used road. And it took me straight to my childhood home.

Satellite images show a road emerging in the summer of 2022, four months after the invasion began. Footage from Winter showed it reappearing in January 2023 and a car driving it.

In an occupied village so close to the front line, I could only think of one group of people who could use the road: Russian soldiers. Only they have reason to wander around the war zone.

The truth is that the village of my childhood is no longer quiet. Verkhnya Krynytsya was occupied by Russia shortly after the large-scale occupation began in February 2022.

At this point my old house was probably empty. My parents had sold it long ago, but I visited Verkhnya Krynytsya at least once a year before it was occupied and found the house seemingly abandoned, its garden overgrown.

This was no surprise: the village was small and sleepy at the best of times, and for anyone still under retirement age, looking for work meant moving elsewhere.

But most remained, and more than a thousand people were still there when Russia began its invasion. Two days later, Ukrainian authorities distributed 43 Kalashnikov rifles to help peasants fight against the Russians.

At a community meeting, residents decided not to use them against the invaders. According to the testimony given in the Ukrainian court, a month later the village head, Serhiy Yavorsky, was captured by the Russians, who beat and tortured him with electricity, injections and acid.

The Russians also targeted a sewage treatment plant outside the village and set up a command center there after the Ukrainians abandoned the facility.

Even the village’s surroundings have changed irreparably.

Before Russia’s full-scale occupation, Verkhnya Krynytsya sat on the beautiful Kakhovka reservoir, which was so vast we called it “The Sea”.

You could see it from almost anywhere in the village. This is where locals go swimming in the summer, and where visitors from all over the region go ice fishing in the winter. One of my first memories was of local women singing Ukrainian folk songs as the sun set over Kakhovka on a warm summer evening.

Following the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023, Deniz disappeared; This led to devastating floods that destroyed homes and farmland.

I tried to reach out to local people to find out what conditions in Verkhnya Krynytsya are like now.

As can be expected, it was very difficult to get an answer.

Many have left the village, and those still in the village are afraid to speak to the media – as in other occupied parts of Ukraine. Frontline locations are particularly lawless places, and reprisals from Russian forces can be swift and brutal.

Social media groups related to Verkhnya Krynytsya fell silent after the invasion, and the questions I posted there remained unanswered.

Asking someone to look after my house was out of the question. A formerly peaceful, sleepy village has turned into a place of horror.

The danger in Verkhnya Krynytsya also comes from the sky. The village’s proximity to the front line means it is a dangerous place, with Ukrainians subject to frequent air raids.

An acquaintance told me that locals prefer to stay indoors for fear of being attacked by drones. “It’s very dangerous there,” I was told. “They are active and can target you, your house or your car. Our village has changed a lot, Vitaly.”

So, given the danger and destruction the war had caused to Verkhnya Krynytsya, who could have made the tracks leading to and from my old home?

It is now unlikely that anyone other than Russian soldiers will choose to move to the village.

Many moved into empty houses after capturing Verkhnya Krynytsya. In June 2022, officials in Zaporizhia said they had information that Russian troops remained in the village. This is the first time satellite images show signs of the road at my old house.

To check whether I was correct in my assumption that Russian soldiers might have moved into my old house, I approached the Ukrainian 128th Detached Heavy Mechanized Brigade operating in the area.

“You are not mistaken. It is extremely likely,” his spokesman Oleksandr Kurbatov told me.

He said that as local people fled the frontline areas, the Russian army arrived in their place.

“If there are not enough vacant houses, the demand increases. Of course, these are usually military personnel of the occupation army,” he told me.

Since no one in the village wanted to risk looking at my house, I asked my BBC Verify colleague Richard Irvine-Brown to take the latest satellite images and analyze them. They showed a pattern of movement around the house where I grew up.

By March 2022, a month after the occupation, there was no sign of a road to the property.

Apart from the faint road visible in two satellite images from June, the property appeared to be overlooked. The road then resurfaced in December, and a car was seen using it in January 2023. We don’t have any images of the property until August, when the road is well established.

The path fades and reappears with the seasons, indicating that whoever uses it only does so periodically.

The property appears to be used during the winter months and possibly by Russian soldiers moving into vacant properties. This makes sense, as severe winters in Ukraine could cause men or their supplies to be too cold to remain in trenches, makeshift housing, and warehouses.

The truth about what happened to my house may not yet be known for a long time – especially while the village is under occupation.

For now, my old home appears to have become a small cog in the larger machine of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Additional reporting by Richard Irvine-Brown