The images from Bucha, west of Kiev, have shocked people and intensified Ukrainian anger over the Russian invasion, but the story that emerges in inaccessible small towns and villages east of the Ukrainian capital suggests that these war crimes are far from a anomaly. . Novyi and Staryi Bykiv, two halves of a village separated by a small river, are located about 50 miles east of Kiev. Scattered by turbulent cottages, their total population is about 2,000. In normal times little happens here: ducks walk the potholed streets, people work in the fields or tend to their own small plots of land and livestock farms. Setting up the tent in Novyi Bykiv. Photo: Sviatoslav MedykDestruction in Novyi Bykiv. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk The Russian army entered the area on February 27, three days after its invasion, as part of its three-pronged move toward Kyiv. When the advance stopped, they formed a base, moving on tanks, artillery and surface-to-air missile systems. Testimonies given by dozens of residents in Staryi and Novyi Bykiv during a two-day visit by the Guardian depict a stealthy, violent and discouraged invading force that was confused as to whether it would liberate or destroy the Ukrainians. Finally, after a month of terror, men and women roamed the streets on Thursday, still in shock. In the parking lot outside the small village administration building in Novyi Bykiv, children looked at the charred shells of two Russian armored vehicles, one in the uniform of a Russian soldier still dressed over one of its hatches. A Russian armored vehicle still in a soldier’s uniform dressed over one of the hatches in Novyi Bykiv. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk The elderly conveyed their grief and grievances to anyone who listened as they collected plastic bags of food. Memories were often accompanied by tears of men and women, young and old. An old woman, wearing a green headscarf and waving a curved wooden cane, was unable to answer questions, simply repeating with tears: “Alas! Alas! Alas!” Tamara and Petro Lysenko, a married couple in their 60s, took a tour of their beautiful country house on the main road. Russian soldiers had broken into and stayed there for several weeks, while the Lysenko crouched in a cellar with relatives. Lysenko’s looted house. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk The Russians ate all the food, killed a piglet and many chickens, stole the laundry and all of Peter’s clothes and a computer, smashed the three family cars, and put the orange Z symbols next to the refrigerator and kitchen door. . The Russians painted the Z symbols on the side of the refrigerator and the kitchen door. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk “I’m been coming and going for two days now and I just do not know what to do. “I feel that they did not destroy my house, but my heart,” Tamara said, looking at the dirty floors and looted cabinets. Car damage. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk However, by last month’s standards, the Lysenko were lucky. In the first hours after the arrival of the Russians, Viktoria Vovk’s large family was hiding in the cellar next to their house. Some relatives had arrived from cities closer to Kyiv. had traveled here when the war broke out, making the reasonable assumption that it would be safer than near the capital. This turned out to be a terrible miscalculation. Vovk’s 29-year-old son Bohdan Hladky, a postal worker, and Oleksandr Mohyrchuk, 39, a factory worker’s brother-in-law, left the cellar to breathe fresh air and smoke a cigarette. A few minutes later, Hladky’s wife, Olesia, heard loud noises and went up to see what was happening. The two men had disappeared. A neighbor came running across the street. “The Russians took your boys,” he said out of breath. Olesia and Victoria ran to a spot on Main Street where Russian soldiers set up a base and begged for information. Bohdan Hladky (left) and Oleskantr Mohyrchuk. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk “These non-people were standing there, we were asking them to let my son and brother-in-law go. “They said they would interrogate them and then let them go,” Wowck said, recalling the ordeal with difficulty. She said the Russian soldiers spoke a “non-Slavic language” to each other, which led her to believe they could be Chechens. An hour later the women heard gunshots from the base area. The next morning they went again to look for the soldiers and saw three corpses in front of the building. There were three other bodies in the back, including those of Hladky and Mohyrchuk. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they had been shot in the head, Vovk said. For nine days the Russians did not allow the family to exhume the bodies. Then, on March 7, a new line of soldiers arrived and agreed that the six men could be buried in the cemetery. Moving around the village was generally forbidden by the Russians, but that day people were allowed to walk to the cemetery for burial. A procession of villagers wrapped in white sheets headed for the spot. There they dug shallow graves to bury the six, while guarding a Russian armored personnel carrier. The newly arrived Russian soldiers appeared to be ashamed of the killings, but one of them claimed to Vovk that it was “Ukrainian Nazis” who had shot the men and not his comrades. Vovk still can not understand why her relatives were arrested from the beginning. She said her son was “away from politics and weapons” and had no ties to the Ukrainian army or territorial defense units. The Russians established their headquarters at the school. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk In the days following the killings, the Russians occupied many buildings in the village to use as bases and set up their headquarters at the local school. A stamped and signed inventory sheet lying on the floor inside the school identified the occupants of the 297th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, stationed in the Penza area of the Urals and equipped with Buk M-2 surface-to-air missiles. An inventory paper inside the school identified the occupants of the 297th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade. Photo: Shaun Walker / The Guardian Inside the school – a newly renovated two-storey building painted with lime green and yellow sand – the devastation was almost complete. The director, Natalia Vovk, browsed for broken glass, torn Russian diet packages and other debris as she investigated the damage, proceeding cautiously as the building had not been fully inspected for landmines. Natalia Vovk, the school principal in Novyi Bykiv. Photo: Sviatoslav MedykDamage inside the school in Novyi Bykiv. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk “I do not know how we will teach. “The school bus has been damaged, so we can not take the children to neighboring villages,” he said. The school would try to arrange distance education, but the Russians had stolen all the electronic equipment. Naturally optimistic, he had started the conversation with stoic behavior and talking about a resurgence, but after a few minutes he wept from the enormous magnitude of the catastrophe. The Russians not only looted the school and completely destroyed the interiors, but their actions also indicate a mission of cultural destruction. A pack of Russian army and a soldier sleeping mattress, left behind at the school in Novyi Bykiv. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk Almost all the books in the library were stacked on the windows to form shields, sealed with foam, making them illegible. In the posters of Ukrainian historical and literary figures around the school, the faces were distorted. An embossed Ukrainian trident on the wall was painted. The only part that remained relatively intact was a small exhibition hall dedicated to the peasants who fought in World War II. “Do not touch the museum,” a Russian soldier had penned on the door. The posters around the school were distorted and painted. Photo: Sviatoslav Medyk On the blackboards in the classrooms, different soldiers had left behind them chalk messages. One had designed a bat, a symbol of GRU military intelligence. Another had written: “Slavic brothers, they are making fun of you!” Next to it someone had written: “Forgive us, we did not want this war”. In another class, the board wrote “Let ‘s live peacefully,” a grotesque message given the carnage around. After killing the six men on the first day, the Russians staged at least one more mass murder during their stay in the village, according to Maksym Didyk, who spent 12 days blindfolded in a small house across the street. school. was abducted at a checkpoint on March 19 and beaten by Russians seeking information on Ukrainian positions. Sometimes the Russian soldier in charge of guarding the detainees there was friendly, but other times he got drunk and became violent, Didyk recalls. Didyk said he was beaten, beaten on the head with bottles and forced to sing Ukrainian folk songs at gunpoint. Eventually his abductor took a flash and allowed him to sit on the top floor of the building, not in the cellar. He was even given adequate food to eat. On March 30, the day before the Russians left, a group of them had a party near the house where the detainees were being held, Didyk recalls. “They sat and cooked meat and drank a lot. They were packing their bags and getting ready to leave and celebrating them …
