NOVOMYKOLAIVKA: With a generous handful of hay and some firm nudges, stud farm workers in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region coax a bay horse onto a lorry that will evacuate the animal to safety.
The danger for the stud farm has been creeping closer for months, with Russia pounding the region with air strikes that kill civilians and pose a mortal threat for the animals.
The state-owned stud farm currently houses 130 horses, some of which had already been evacuated from elsewhere in Zaporizhzhia or from the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine’s central east.
“We are currently transferring the horses at this stud farm to other stud farms in Ukraine,” director of the state-owned enterprise “Horse Breeding of Ukraine” Vitaliy Brovko told AFP.
At the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022, the farm’s stables were hit with a missile, leaving one horse wounded and others traumatized.
