Three-quarters of the street is filled with the charred skeletons of Russian tanks torn apart by Ukrainian missiles. Every house on both sides has been destroyed, some of pieces of flying armor found in gardens or embedded in walls. In the small area, beyond the point where the last tank stopped, there are bone fragments and a storm, from civilians who had been killed by the Russians and whose bodies had been abandoned for weeks. “They let them rot after they died, as if they were garbage bags,” said Dimitrou Zamohylny, a Bucha resident. “At that time crows of crows were sitting on the bodies, stitching out and eating eyes. I never thought I would see something like this happen, in fact happening near my house. “How could one imagine something so bad in an ordinary place like this.” But Bucha is no longer just “an ordinary place”. This city in the northwest of Kiev, with a population of 36,971 at the last census, is now in the spotlight internationally for horrific reasons: the massacre of hundreds of people – women, children and men, young and old – for whom there is a call for trial. Vladimir Putin for war crimes. The Russians withdrew from Bukha, as they had done from a number of cities, from where they were supposed to launch a pulverizing attack on what was said to be Putin’s fundamental goal – the occupation of Kiev and the establishment of a regime more receptive to Moscow. The Ukrainian president, who survived attempts to oust him, including assassination attempts, arrived in Bucha on Monday accompanied by a crowd of media. He wanted to show what he has described as “genocide”, mass killings that have been repeated in other villages, towns and cities under Russian occupation. “We know thousands of people who have been killed and tortured, with severed limbs, raped women and murdered children; the dead have been found in barrels, underground, strangled, tortured,” said Volodymyr Zelensky, wearing a jacket. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, speaks to the press in Bucha yesterday (AFP / Getty) But Mr Zelensky is still ready to negotiate with those who have caused such suffering. “It is very difficult to speak when you see what they have done here,” he admitted, while calling for the talks to be speeded up. “The longer the Russian Federation delays the meeting process, the worse it is for it, for this situation and for this war.” The president, his entourage and the media in attendance left. Buha residents returned to collecting the pieces, queuing for food deliveries, trying to make the damaged houses habitable, visiting the injured in hospitals, looking for missing family members and friends, and getting on with their lives as best I could. The dead, some with their hands tied behind their backs, others with hoods, others shot in the back of the head, are being removed from the dug and blackened streets by Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers. The Russians seem to have put many of those killed in mass graves. The largest is located behind the church of St. Andrew and the Pyervozvannoho All Saints, where estimates for the numbers buried range from 60 to about 320 or more. Piles of brown soil are stacked over a 45-foot-long pit into which corpses have been dumped in black plastic bags. Some of the bags are split, with legs and arms protruding. The limbs have been released among the buried, rising from the ground. one palm is bowed as if in supplication. The bodies of civilians in plastic bags lay in a mass grave in Bucha (EPA) There was another tomb in a wooded area 18 miles west of the city. Among the bodies found there was that of Olga Sukhenko, mayor of the nearby town of Motyzhyn, along with her husband and son. Her fingers and hands were found broken, according to the mayor of the neighboring town of Kopyliv. There are still corpses in houses. One is that of 89-year-old Alla Minorava, who was found lying on her bed with blood stains on her hands. He had died on March 25. Russian soldiers who had occupied her house told neighbors that they had shot her. “They did not say why she was shot. “It’s hard to think of a reason, she was an old woman, she was almost not a threat to them,” said Sergei Malik. “Many of the murders here do not make sense, they killed other elderly people like her, and young boys and girls.” Ms. Minorava’s grandchildren were among the family members hiding in a basement while the Russians looted the place. Household goods, including a washing machine, were stolen and others, including a TV, were broken. “Those who hid in the basement, especially the children, were terrified. “They could hear the Russians getting drunk, tearing down the place above them.” “But at least they did not die like poor Allas.” The bodies are found on a street in Bucha (AFP / Getty) Sergei Simolenskiy, 50, is convinced that the only reason he survived was his tattoo. “I was arrested several times. “Once they put me upright for more than three hours with my hands on the wall,” he said. “In the end they had a gun in the back of my head, I could hear the security banging and I knew they were going to shoot. “Then they saw my tattoo and realized that I was a Marine and let me go.” Mr Simolenskiy served in Soviet forces in the early 1990s and deployed in the war in Georgia. He now says he feels nothing but anger against Russian troops in Ukraine. “We all know that Putin is behind this catastrophe. The Russian soldiers told me that they were following orders, but they are soldiers, they know what a war crime is. “They have done some terrible things. I have seen people arrested, tied up and shot in the head. How many did they kill? I would say around 600 or 700. They left the corpses in the streets, I saw a dog eating a human head one day. There are many dogs on the street because their owners are gone or lost. “Some of these dogs have become vicious, running in herds, attacking children.” A corpse is transported to a school in Bouha (AFP / Getty) Natalia Yakovenka was a lonely figure standing on the sidewalk looking at a house. It belonged to her brother, Artem, who is missing. “He had sent his family away and was living alone,” he said. “We heard that the Russians had fired him because he had been in the Ukrainian army in the past. But he is disabled, he could not fight anymore. I heard they may have found a corpse, but where? Is he in a morgue, in a grave? ” Serhiy Kaplinsky, a medical examiner in Bucha, said he and his colleagues had collected about 100 bodies so far. He had buried about 60 bodies in the cemetery before leaving the city on March 8, after hearing that Russians were picking up local officials. Fifteen had died of natural causes, he said, and the rest were injured by shrapnel or killed by gunfire, including at close range. Andriy Klionchonduk was shot in the leg during the fighting on Vokzalnaya. “There was so much fire, so many rockets that I did not even hear the gunfire,” he said. “But I felt a sudden pain and then I felt damp. It was my blood. It was February 27, when all these tanks were destroyed. Many Russians were killed that day. I think they killed a lot of people for revenge for it on the street. They also arrested many. ” The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has published photos of what they say was a torture chamber in barracks used by Russian forces. The bodies found there were on their knees when they were shot and at least one had been shot in the knees before being executed, the Kiev army claimed. Russian troops had occupied behind looted shops in their neighborhoods near the train station. All that was left were mattresses on the floors, with bedding taken from nearby houses – a blanket with the “I love New York” pattern. Graffiti on the wall outside proclaimed “Russian power.” A small field in the back was full of empty and broken bottles of alcohol. On the outskirts of Bucha was another batch of Russian tanks that had been hit. Ukrainian soldiers rescued everything they could from the wrecks. They also exhumed corpses, the corpses of young men broken and burned unrecognizably, part of the deadly tax in the fierce battle for Bouha.
