Documenting alleged war crimes in Ukraine
By Valérie Gauriat, Euronews international correspondent
After witnessing first hand the onset of Russia’s war in Ukraine, I travelled back to the Kyiv region a few weeks later to find a very different atmosphere. Life in the capital was slowly resuming after the withdrawal of the Russian army.
Still, I knew the sight of people walking down the streets again, the bright beds of tulips that had blossomed on Maidan Square, would stand in stark contrast with the grim scenes that awaited me on the city's outskirts.
I had come back to document the war crimes allegedly committed by the Russian troops during the occupation. The Russian government denies any involvement in the killings.
What used to be quiet suburbs and villages outside of Kyiv had turned into mountains of ruins, behind which lay the open wounds of those forced to live through weeks of horror.
Walking me through Irpin, Sasha, who stills lives in the neighbourhood, described the nightmare of watching the summary executions of several of his fellow residents. I saw the sorrow on his face when he showed me the exact spot where he saw his friend Sania was shot in the head by a Russian soldier.
As I continued the journey through the unspeakable, the accounts of those who dared share their stories with me grew only more horrific.
In Borodyanka, I witnessed one of the many exhumations of civilian bodies who were temporarily buried in yards and gardens during the occupation.
“Look at how handsome he was!” cried out Nadiya, showing me a picture of her 34 year-old-son Constantin, whose body was now lying at our feet, unrecognisable. Nadiya’s tears flowed at the unbearable sight of her son’s face, his mouth gaping in pain.
In Makariv, while attending another gruesome exhumation, a man took our team aside. He wanted us to meet a woman living nearby who says she was raped by a Russian soldier.
We found her at work at the local hospital. The woman, who chose to remain anonymous, wanted to tell us her story so the whole world would know. Her voice trembled as she described the crime, and she wept as she remembered the agony of her husband, shot dead while trying to come to her rescue.
Against all odds, the woman was freed from her tormentor by a group of Russian intelligence forces passing by her house.
“After the liberation,” she said in a whisper, “I learned that those who did this to me had caught another woman. They raped her and slit her throat. If it were not for the Russian intelligence men, I would not be alive.”
In Bucha, the place where the most infamous atrocities to date were discovered following the Russian withdrawal, I met Olga, whose husband was last seen coming out of a food distribution centre. Ten days later, she found him in a morgue: “They broke his skull, they broke his bones,” she told me.
Unravelling her memories, Olga went on, describing the roar of gunfire and explosions, the procession of Russian tanks, the sheer terror of it all.
“They killed, they tortured, they did such horrible things!” she cried, hiding her face in her hands. “They said they came to liberate us, but from who, and from what? They liberated us from life itself. I wait for my husband to come back home from work every day. But he will never come back.”
Twenty-year-old Tetiana, another Bucha resident, will not allow silence to fall on what happened to her mother, shot between the eyes by a Russian sniper in front of her and her father. Tetiana found the strength to take us to the crime scene. Between gasps for air, she described the gunshot, her mother's fall, and the blood splashed all over the asphalt.
“I cannot keep silent,” she told me. “I want the world to know what happened. Maybe one day we will know who did it. And so there will be justice.”
NOW WATCH Valérie’s extraordinary short film: a special edition of Euronews Witness.
No comments:
Post a Comment