“Remembering Russian Crimes”: From the tortured city of Bucha near Kiev to front-line zones like Kherson and Kramatorsk, Ukrainians today paid tribute to the victims of the war, exactly one year after the Russian invasion.

In the Church of St. Andrew in Butsy, a small photo exhibition recalls the dark times that this community lived through in the northwestern suburbs of the Ukrainian capital. A mass grave was dug near the building under construction for the hasty burial of the dead before the liberation of the city by Ukrainian troops at the end of March 2022.

“We have gathered to remember Russian crimes, horror,” the priest said at the ceremony, organized “in the name of peace in Ukraine and its defenders.”

Last spring, Bucha became a symbol of the war crimes that Ukraine accuses Russia of committing.

“My wife and I stayed here for a month during the occupation. We didn’t leave, we saw all this horror,” said Sergey Zamostyan, a retired teacher, 62, leaving the temple with bloodshot eyes. “More than 50 of our soldiers and 450 civilians shot by (Russians) are already resting in the cemetery. Why; Explain to me why? continues. Zamostyane said he lived on Yablonskaya Street, where AFP journalists found the bodies of about 20 civilians immediately after the Russians left. Among them was the godfather of their son, who was “killed in our yard.” And “a man we didn’t know, we found him dead there, we saw him with our own eyes,” he said.

“We are tired of war”

Shortly thereafter, a second memorial service was held at the Butsa cemetery. In recent weeks, a dozen new graves have been dug up, strewn with flowers and Ukrainian flags: soldiers who were recently killed are buried here, the “price” is still paid by the city, which had a population of 30,000 before the war.

The most recent grave is 29-year-old Alexei, who was killed in mid-January. His mother, Tatyana, returned from Germany, where she had taken refuge as a refugee to bury her child. “We are tired, we do not want a new war. It’s cruel, we want to be left alone,” says the mother, who is supported by 24-year-old Anna, Alexei’s partner, who says all she feels is ’emptiness’.

In Lvov, western Ukraine, relatives of soldiers killed in action gathered at a cemetery on Thursday evening. For the mother of one of them, Anna Krasitskaya, “this anniversary is not a holiday, but pain.”

“My son is buried here. Tomorrow it will be a year since he woke up in the morning and, seeing on TV that the war had begun, he hurried to the army (…) Tomorrow it will be a year since he went to defend our Motherland,” said Mariana. Sulga.

Kherson in the south was liberated in November, but lives on in the rhythm of Russian bombardments. “Everything has changed, our lives have been turned upside down,” explained Diana, a 31-year-old saleswoman. “I dream of the end of the war, I dream that our child would sleep in our house,” and not at my grandmother’s, far from the front, the woman says.

Almost 700 kilometers east of Butsa, Kramatorsk also remembers its dead. This city is very close to Bahamut and has been at the center of the fighting for months.

30-year-old Mikhail Shikirin is buried under gray skies, his coffin draped with the Ukrainian flag. He was a member of the National Guard and died as a result of a bomb explosion on February 18 in Tsypilovka, Luhansk region. “He died for the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine (…) Thanks to these soldiers, we are here today, alive and unharmed,” the priest says, looking at the waving Ukrainian flags on another 21 graves.

Three soldiers, Shikirin’s comrades, fire three times into the air, paying tribute to the dead.

AFP