Russian troops force hostages to thank Putin... ‘for not killing us'

LIFE IN RUINS: A woman cries as she tries to find the body of her son in the debris of a residential building destroyed during Russia’s invasion in Borodianka, Ukraine

Borodianka (Ukraine): The first sign of trouble was when a squad of Chechen soldiers burst through the gate. They jumped from their Jeeps, combat boots hitting the pavement hard, and ordered the 500 patients and staff of Borodianka’s special-needs home into the courtyard, at gunpoint.

“We thought we were going to be executed,” Maryna Hanitska, the home’s director, said this week, days after Russian forces withdrew from Borodianka.

She told how the soldiers pulled out a camera. They barked at Hanitska to make everyone smile. Most of the patients were crying. “We command you to say to the camera, ‘Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,’’’ the soldiers demanded of Hanitska. With guns in her face, she said, she ran through her options. She would never thank Russia’s president, whom she had called “a liar” and “a killer.”