Back to Bucha

Radio Télévision Suisse
14min

0’04 Bucha, Ukraine

00:00:06,414 VO: -Her son Dyma has had a proper burial, but she is far to have found peace. Maria has cried every day since March.

00:00:17,603 Maria: -Why? You never hurt anyone. You were always a good person. I wish I could join you.

00:00:30,087 VO: -At his mother's side, Alexander tells us of the hatred growing inside of him as he reflects on his brother's grave. Dyma was killed by Russian soldiers. A civilian victim among many others. The cemetery of Bucha has grown suddenly.

00:00:48,371 Alexandre: -This part of the cemetery appeared after the Russian occupation. All those graves from the road at the fence over there, are the bodies of people that were exhumed from the holes dug and gardens, like Dyma.

0’52 Alexandre Konovalov, Bucha resident

00:01:03,156 VO: -Dyma was first buried in the courtyard of their building. It was too dangerous to go further away while the Russians were in town. They had to keep the body for 4 days in the corridor.

00:01:18,026 Alexandre: -On March 5, 15 minutes before the curfew, my brother was walking towards the cellar to take refuge and some soldiers just shot him.

00:01:29,855 VO: -That day, Alexander introduces us to his mother, Maria. She's been overwhelmed ever since her son was killed, as well as many others, sometimes even before their eyes.

1’47 Title – Back to Bucha

00:01:55,440 VO: -This is a street that looks ordinary. A street like any other, but which will remain infamous, even in history books. When we had discovered Yablonska Street, it looked like this. It was April 3^rd, on a Sunday, and we were among the first civilians to enter Bucha, since its liberation, to discover this scene. This is where we had met Alexander. He was passing by to come and feed the dogs of a friend, and his words would remain engraved forever in our memories.

00:02:32,040 Alexandre: -It was like a safari, they were drunk and shot people as soon as they saw them.

00:02:41,857 VO: -8 months have passed. Alexander realizes how traumatized he already was that day.

00:02:48,460 Alexandre: -We met at the intersection of Yablonska street. The bodies were there. I have often thought about this moment. For me, at that moment it became almost normal that people were killed by the Russians. What bothered me was that the bodies had not yet been removed. I had lost my mind.

2’51 Alexandre Konovalov, Bucha resident

00:03:14,872 Interviewer: -How did you react when the Russians said it was wrong, that it had all been staged?

00:03:22,360 Alexandre: -Nobody expected anything else from them. Lying is normal with the Russians. The bodies had been lying there two or three weeks already, covered with mud and dirt. Russian TV said that that they had been thrown there to make a scene.

00:03:42,054 VO: -Alexander and his mother have chosen to stay in Bucha, not to leave this city as they now could, but it's a daily ordeal for Maria.

00:03:52,800 Maria: -He comes every time that I cry. I kept this cat because Dyma wanted to save it. At first I thought it would get easier with time, but it's worse every day.

3’58 Maria Petrivna, Bucha resident

00:04:06,849 VO: -Around Alexander and Maria's house, snow covers the earth, several times in the last few months. Life starts again. On April 3, we thought we had seen the worst, it was not over. In this cellar, we discovered five bodies. Men in civilian clothes, hands tied behind their backs. The authorities had not been notified yet. Since then, the Ukrainian police have been investigating. One of its representatives accepted to join us on site. The cellar is located in a sanatorium for children. In March, it was occupied by the Russian army.

00:05:02,060 Iryna: It was the first place where we found this mass grave.

00:05:03,241 VO: -The men were indeed shot on the spot.

00:05:08,180 Iryna: And we know that these places are from the bullets. And all the men were shot in the head, and also had shots in their knees. All of them were civilians.

00:05:19,160 Interviewer: So you found their identities?

00:05:21,180 Iryna: Yes, right now we know each person. All of them are civilians, some from a cleaning company, plumber, locksmith, and also a homeless guy. But no one from armed forces or police or something like that.

5’21 Iryna Prianishnikova, Ukrainian police

00:05:40,797 VO: -The five men wouldn't be the first ones to have died here, this would be an interrogation centre.

00:05:52:020 Iryna: In the next room you will see the chair in which they took people and tortured them here. They sat here and they used this chair to put them there and torture them. We also found some cigarette butts, some bullets, so we think this is one of the places where they tortured people.

00:06:15,600 VO: -The Ukrainian police hope not to let these crimes go unpunished. 422 civilians were killed in Bucha. But the suspects are on the other side of the front line.

00:06:29,060 Iryna: We have already identified more than 60,000 soldiers of the Russian army. We know who were here in our territory, and we will find all of them.

Interviewer: You hope to find them.

Iryna: I hope so, yes.

00:06:46,027 VO: -In a corner of the city, we found the remains of the cars that littered the streets during the occupation. The cars of those who were trying to escape from Bucha. Among them was a mother and her two young children, they all died under Russian fire. They were buried here. In April we found a cross with their 3 names. On seeing us, a woman had come to talk to us. The grandmother of the children.

00:07:23,040 Interviewer: -Do you want to tell us what happened?

00:07:27,003 Old woman: -My daughter-in-law wanted to protect her children. They wanted to leave Bucha, but they did not succeed. They were killed.

00:07:39,760 VO: -We find her house and ring her doorbell. It is again a dejected woman who opens her door for us.

00:07:52,520 Old woman: -It's very difficult. I can't forget them, they are always in front of my eyes. I can't sleep at night.

00:08:06,000 VO: -Her son joins us, he walks with difficulty.

00:08:10,120 Old woman: -This is my son.

00:08:13,800 Son: -I was in the car when we fled and the Russians fired. I lost my leg, I was given a prosthesis. My family died, I survived.

00:08:24,560 VO: -He survived and continues to do so, consumed by hatred.

00:08:29,600 Son: -This is no longer a life, it is an existence, a hard existence. I am a good-natured person, but I have murderous desires. I want to kill Russians.

00:08:53,863 VO: -The traces of Bucha's martyrdom are everywhere in the city, but the reconstruction is underway. In the mainland district, workers have rebuilt the supermarket. It had suffered bombing and looting. Mikhail cleans up the rubble. The supermarket is due to reopen in 2 months. He is positive about the climate in his city.

00:09:30,680 Mikhail: -Things are better in Bucha. People live again and are more happy. There is now hope for life, whereas people were mostly dark, depressed, sad.

9’35 Mikhail Vermeychenko

00:09:55,062 VO: -On Sunday, the inhabitants of Bucha hurry to join this particular church. At its feet a gigantic mass grave was dug: 116 bodies were buried in the church garden. The tragedy did not discourage the faithful.

00:10:18,520 Young girl: -Every day I cherish the fact to be alive. I am grateful that my loved ones are alive. Unfortunately, not all of them.

00:10:32,381 VO: -In his sermon, the priest will evoke the life that has been disrupted or broken for the community of Bucha. He calls to go forward.

00:10:47,500 Andriy: -No one was expecting that. This tragedy will come with us. But we have to go on living. We don't have to look backwards all the time.

10’51 Andriy Galavin, Priest

00:11:06,310 VO: -The priest was there when the mass grave was discovered, when the bodies were exhumed. They are in the cemetery and a memorial has been set up here. The priest confides that it is painful to come here.

00:11:19,995 Andriy: -So I don't have nightmares, I try not to talk about it.

00:11:25,840 Interviewer: -You said that life must go on. How is this possible?

00:11:31,649 Andriy: -We have to finish the war first. End it with a just peace. Then we'll rebuild our lives, but for the better.

00:11:48,463 VO: -In April, at the edge of the common grave, we had met Vadim and Tetiana. The couple is looking for Denys, their son, of whom they had had no news for several days.

00:12:02,314 Vadim: -There's an arm sticking out with the sleeve of the jacket, our son had the same one. We thought we had found him, we got close, but no.

00:12:13,343 VO: -The couple spends their days searching for him. We followed them through Bucha, in their quest for information. The only thing they knew was that he had been arrested by the Russians and that they had claimed to have released him.

00:12:28,775 Tetiana: -What to think? Either they sent him away or he is dead. If he were alive and free he would have come home.

12’35 Tetiana Grigorieva

00:12:39,320 VO: -8 months later, we find Tetiana at home.

00:12:51,554 Interviewer: The last time we met, you were looking for your son. Did you find him?

00:12:58,378 Tetiana: -No, we didn't. We don't know what happened to him nor where he is. We contacted the police, the special services, the military intelligence came, the Red Cross also. We knocked on every door, nobody knows anything.

13’06 Tetiana Grigorieva

00:13:22,215 VO: -8 months of waiting, they've considered all the hypotheses, they even went to psychics to find him, all that in vain.

00:13:30,425 Tetiana: -It's hard not to know where he is. It's like living a nightmare. I don't know how I've made it this far. Hope is what keeps me going.

00:13:47,690 VO: -The couple continues their search, they rearranged a room for him, because they refuse to consider Denys dead.

13’52 Vadim Grigoriev

00:13:58,954 Vadim: -We did some research on the Internet. We looked at pictures of dead bodies in Bucha, we didn't find anything.

00:14:08,562 Tetiana: -These photos were terrifying, but the worst thing was the fear of finding my son, of identifying him in one of these pictures. My hands and legs were shaking.

00:14:24,120 VO: -Waiting in doubt. Since the Russian withdrawal, in the Kyiv region, there have been more than 200 like Denys to have disappeared without a trace.

14’36 Credits:

Sebastién Faure
Jón Björgvinsson
Mykhaylo Gorbatov
Fanny Lelong
Laurent Jespersen