Andrii Pobihai wore his army uniform to the funeral of Bucha, even if he retired. He was one of the 40 people to defy freezing temperatures and air raid sirens on Wednesday to say goodbye to his friend, who died of a heart attack at the age of 48 after serving more than 10 years in the ‘army.
Mr. Pobihai, who heard red in his altered hand, said he was disgusted by what President Trump had said a few hours earlier: that this war with Russia was somehow Ukraine’s fault. He wondered what these comments warned, after a day of negotiations By finishing the war which included high-level representatives of the United States and Russia, but none of the country, the Russians have invaded.
“I am very, very angry,” said Mr. Pobihai, 66, who has retired as a commander in the 11th distinct motorized infantry battalion in 2019, three years before the launch of its large -scale invasion. He had led 54 men near Mariupol, but since then, he said, the Russians killed all these Ukrainian soldiers-the last ones only earlier.
“The best guys die,” said Pobihai. “How can you talk to these jackals?”
Bucha, a suburb of 37,000 to around 20 miles northwest of the capital, kyiv, has become a Notorious symbol of Russian brutality. The Russians took it over in the days following the invaded global accusations War crimes.
Images of that time ricochet Around the world: the priest is left dead in a garage, the mouth open. The singer of the church choir and his family, their cut members, their bodies have burned. The woman shot death by pushing her bike on the Yablunska Street.
On Wednesday, many in Bucha seemed to have trouble resuming Mr. Trump’s comments. When the Biden administration was in power, the United States was the most powerful ally in Ukraine. Now they had a lot of questions: was Trump just talking about the cuff? Were the United States really based with Russia, a pariah on the world scene?
“Now is he going to help the Russians?” Alla Kriuchkova asked Alla Kriuchkova, pending a military recruitment center in Bucha for her husband, who had just been called. “They have destroyed everything here, and now we are supposed to abandon?” How does it work?
She then answered her own question: “If America leaves us, we are screwed up.”
The ghosts of the massacre are always everywhere in Bucha. In the municipal cemetery of Bucha on Memory Street, the body of Oleksiy Onyshchenko, Mr. Pobihai’s friend, perhaps rested 50 meters from where dozens of bodies in black plastic bags were once stacked.
At the corner of the streets Yablunska and Vokzalna – Ground Zero from destruction in Bucha – Iryna Abramova Lives in a new square house built to replace the house that was burned almost three years ago. Whenever Ms. Abramova leaves for work, she must pass the place where the Russian soldiers fired on her husband, Oleh, at close range in front of her.
Then there is the four -story pink building built in the Soviet era, where Russian soldiers set up camp after invading. After the release of Bucha in April 2022, waste as high as the knees were found in the building. A water table had dried on the ground.
Now, a man wearing thick lens glasses has worked on a computer in the front window. Behind the building, eight young pines were labeled with the names of the men who were killed there at the start of the war. “Anatolii,” read one. “Andriy,” read another. Some trees still had Christmas decorations, garlands in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag, balls of red and green.
Abramova, 50, who is now working in a dry cleaner, said she had tried therapy and medicines without success. She said the investigators recently told her that they had identified the Russians who had killed her husband.
“Now I am afraid that the court will do nothing, because of what is happening politically,” said Abramova. “They will say that the Russians are doing well. The thing that I am most afraid of is that they will say that we are guilty ourselves. That we are guilty of killing ourselves. »»
Reverend Andriy Halavin, an Orthodox priest at the church of St. Andrew, the largest church in Bucha, carries the memories of his city with him, leafing through photos on his phone.
There is one of the smiling Myron Zvarychuk, the priest who founded their religious community in the 1990s, then one of him died. Other photos show the burned bodies of the singer and several men, leaning, hands tied, found fired in the cellar a children’s camp. Another still portrayed the bodies of Eight men Memorial by trees near the Russian camp on time. (A ninth has escaped alive because the Russians did not notice that he was still breathing.)
Father Halavin also showed a new cartoon by a Ukrainian artist who depicts Mr. Trump pointing the feet of Jesus on the cross. “I tried to find a very revealing image,” said Father Halavin, an ironic smile on his face. “It’s Trump saying to Jesus:” It would not have happened if I was president. “”
A memorial outside the church has identified those who were killed – by Timur Kozyrev, 18 months old, to Iryna Rudenko, killed 18 days less than his 99th anniversary – a few meters from the place where a Glurn of mass once held 116 body.
Father Halavin underlined a red house just beyond where a mother and his two young sons formerly lived. They had fled the Donbas, in the east, in 2014, shortly after the Russians seized the Crimea and the separatists supported by Russia occupied parts of eastern Ukraine.
“They moved here to escape, then they were killed,” he said.
In the municipal cemetery of Bucha, 52 graves were only marked by numbers, like 230 and 318. These bodies were not identified.
In the military section of the cemetery, the Ukrainian flags flew over each tombstone. “Slaves are not allowed in paradise,” proclaimed a serious marker. Another bore a photo of a sergeant with the Hedgehog; He was seriously injured in Bakhmut and died in a kyiv hospital on June 12. “Infinite pain,” said the epitaph. “You are not there, but you are everywhere, forever with us.”
Other Bucha soldiers had called indications like Viking, Lover and even Bucha, who died on April 13 while fighting in the east.
Mr. Onyshchenko, the soldier who was buried on Wednesday, collapsed on Saturday at his post in Mykolavi. A heart attack, said family and friends. Mr. Pobihai said that they had served together in the 11th battalion in Mariupol and Popasna in 2014 and 2015. The Russians now control the two regions.
“If it’s not us, then who?” Mr. Onyshchenko had asked after the enrollment, according to a Blower Public published on Facebook by the Mayor of Bucha.
After Mr. Onyshchenko’s coffin was placed in a freshly dug tomb, Mr. Pobihai crossed the military cemetery, looking at the tombstones. He thought there was a good chance that Mr. Trump will end up changing his mind.
“When Russia captures Ukraine and mobilizes the best Ukrainian fighters in the Russian army, then goes against NATO and Europe, perhaps then,” he said with a shoulders.
Oleksandr Chubko Contributed reports.
