Nevada Rock Band

–Nevada Rock Band and a Ukrainian Village–

Fourteen-year-old Sasha lives in a small village in the Mykolaiv region (southern Ukraine). When Russia invaded, heavy fighting broke out in the vicinity of his village.

Every house was badly damaged by shelling, and some homesteads were burned to the ground.

Sasha’s village was under Russian occupation for five months. His neighbors were killed. At first, his family survived the shelling by hiding in a cellar. Then they managed to escape. The region was not fully liberated until November 2022.

With the onset of warm weather, Sasha’s family is working on restoring their house.

This story is far from unique: many thousands of families across Ukraine are returning to their hometowns and villages destroyed by the Russians and are resolved to rebuild their lives anew. But Sasha’s village is unusual in that it became the backdrop for a song, “Crushed”, by the Nevada-based pop/rock band “Imagine Dragons”.

In a three-minute video clip, Sasha is filmed walking along a street full of potholes left by the shelling; entering the ruins of the village school; stopping before a pile of rubble that once was his neighbors’ house; passing by the skeletal remnants of other houses; and standing before his own house with a gaping wall, which his family is hoping to restore.

The village has been so thoroughly demolished that it is impossible to describe or imagine the scene.

The clip concludes with these words across the screen: “We stand united with our Ukrainian friends.”

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is the clip; I think it is worth seeing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSav7HayxtI

Based on https://meduza.io/feature/2023/05/11/imagine-dragons-snyali-klip-v-ukraine

5/11/2023. Translated  by Lena Nekludova