Ukrainian Srebrenica: how Bucha lives a year after the Russian occupation

We remember Bucha two weeks after the Russians withdrew from this city. She smelled the smoke from the fires where the surviving residents cooked their food, as well as the stench from the thousands of refrigerators, where food was left in the dark boxes of high-rise buildings.
"Bucha smelled like death, although the bodies had already been taken from the city streets at that time." said one woman, who entered the city at the same time. 
There was no electricity, water, or heating here for a long time, all the shops were devastated and looted, and the local "Epicenter" turned into a huge fire whose rusted structures protruded like the ribs of a dead Leviathan.

A few half-burnt houses looked out over the city freed from the Russians with empty melted pupils, although there were far fewer of them than in neighboring Irpen.
The occupation of Bucha lasted "only" 28 days at the very beginning of the war - from March 3 to 31. But in this half-moon, Russian soldiers killed more than 400 civilians here and destroyed a significant part of the infrastructure - electric poles lay on the roads, a water tower was fired from armored vehicles, the asphalt is covered with holes from "arrivals".
A year after the escape of the Russians from the Kiev region, Bucha visually hardly resembles the post-apocalyptic place it was in early April 2022. Done.
The material injuries of the city have not yet completely healed, but they are gradually being repaired.

However, there are wounds that are unlikely to heal at all - this is the memory of people who survived the occupation, captivity or lost their relatives on the streets of Bucha in the cold March of 2022.
This is the story of the current Bucha - a once quiet suburb of Kiev, which a year ago had to forever become a symbol of the war crimes of the Russian army and the "Srebrenica of the 21st century".

And although the "Massacre in Bucha" is not legally recognized as genocide, in Ukraine those events are unofficially considered genocide, the deliberate destruction of Ukrainians.

What is happening now in Bucha

The basic infrastructure in Bucha was restored very quickly. Electricity, gas and water were restored here already in April last year, and the gas supply was repaired just in time for Easter, which was celebrated on April 24, 2022.
At the same time, repairs after a month of occupation presented new challenges to utilities, which no one could have imagined before. For example, when the water is turned on, it turns out that the drain pipes in some high-rise buildings are clogged with grease. Under normal conditions, this grease is simply washed out of the kitchen with warm water. But without light or heating, the people who stayed in these houses had to wash dishes with cold water (carried in buckets from nearby wells). As a result, the grease did not melt and accumulated in the pipes. The problem was solved when the apartments were again supplied with hot water.
Another critical need is the supply of food, medicine and other basic necessities. In the first months, shops and pharmacies were closed, so those needs were covered by humanitarian organizations. There was really a lot of help for Bucha, and volunteers delivered it to the right address from the first days after liberation, which helped to avoid famine and a humanitarian disaster.
This did not apply to cigarettes, so a few packs were a significant gift for the residents of Bucha at that time.

Stores started to open in the summer, and gradually almost all the stores that were open "before the occupation", including supermarkets, started working.
But the most symbolic was the reopening of the Novus supermarket, as well as the McDonalds in the center of Bucha - they were killed in the first days of the invasion by the fire of Russian armored personnel carriers and armored personnel carriers from the convoy, which broke through from Gostomel along Vokzalna Street on February 27 and eventually destroyed. Both of these locations became operational in December 2022, creating an unusual "business as usual" feeling.
But "as it was" in reality could no longer happen. Many residents of Bucha lost their homes - some had their apartments set on fire by the Russians when they fired "warning" rounds from their armored vehicles at the windows during the movement of the convoy, others had their private houses destroyed during the attempted attack on Irpen, and some were hit by a mine or a rocket from "Grad ", during the artillery fire, skirmishes that happened here almost constantly.
International partners helped provide housing for the residents of Bucha (as well as refugees from other Ukrainian cities). For example, Poland handed over modular houses - although this is not housing in the true sense of the word, because it has its limitations, especially during power outages, but it helped many to survive the winter.
And the destroyed houses are gradually being rebuilt, although it is a much longer process. For example, a part of Vokzalna Street is currently being rebuilt - the same one where the first column of Russian armored vehicles was burned, photos of which once went around the world. Moreover, this is already the second stage of repairs right there, which raises questions for those residents of Bucha who did not have any repairs. Symbolism and fame obviously play a role.
Similarly, many in Bucha raised questions when many roofs in the city center were replaced at the end of 2022, which did not appear to be critical.
At the same time, many burned apartments in high-rise buildings were either repaired or preserved for the winter. The complete restoration of the latter remains is an open question; here everything will depend on the resources of the city itself, as well as international aid.

Reconstruction of "New Srebrenica"

Bucha was actually the first evidence of war crimes committed by the Russian Federation during the full-scale invasion.
If earlier in the West, Ukraine's statements about the "genocide against Ukrainians" were quite skeptical, then dozens of bodies in black bags and without them from the mass grave near the church of St. Andrew the First-Called in the center of Bucha or shot prisoners with their hands tied from the outskirts of the city made the entire Western world to look at Russian actions in a new way.
It is significant that even in Ukraine itself, before Ukrainian forces entered Bucha together with international journalists, not everyone believed in mass killings of civilians.
Russian volunteer Artem Shirobokov with the call sign "Yesenin", who fought on the side of Ukraine as part of "Azov" since 2014, and at the beginning of March defended Buch and "civilly" left the environment, reminds that one of the Ukrainian media simply did not accept his the story of mass casualties. 
"One publication was interested in this, but after the interview they did not believe it, concluding that the story about the shooting of civilians was false. They didn't publish it. They wrote to me again only when the Ukrainian army entered the city, and everyone had already seen the photos of the corpses from Jablunska," wrote "Yesenin" on the anniversary of those events.
That's how Bucha, a pleasant suburb of Kyiv with a park, became world famous.
Although it is difficult that any of the inhabitants of Bucha could have imagined such a thing, and certainly none of them wanted fame at that price.
In the aforementioned Jablunska Street alone, Russian military personnel, including elite "Pskov" paratroopers, killed more than 60 civilians.
Therefore, Bucha, as "New Srebrenica" 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian capital, plays a sad but historical role in this war.

And that's why almost all international delegations come here (as well as in Borođanko, which was destroyed by Russian aerial bombs) - from the current presidents and prime ministers of European countries to Boris Johnson, who visited Bucha after his resignation.
This helped and continues to help rebuild the city with international support. The uproar, in fact, is not a matter of one destroyed street or one occupied Ukrainian city, it is a kind of indicator of how the Western world reacts to the bloody echo of mass murders in Srebrenica, Rwanda or Cambodia already in Europe of the 21st century.
Therefore, for both Ukraine and Europe, the revival of this city from the first days of de-occupation has largely become a matter of principle, which explains so much attention from international partners and humanitarian funds.
At the same time, in the process of restoring the city to the state "as it was", it is important not to forget about the people for whom "the way it was" can no longer be a priori.
What such people have experienced and are experiencing can be illustrated by the two stories below.

First story : captivity

A resident of Bucha, an insurance agent by profession, Igor Zaderigolova could not leave Bucha when hostilities began. On the first day of the great invasion, he and his son watched from his apartment as Russian helicopters attacked the Gostomel airport: "I look out the window and see that the helicopters are flying directly above us in the direction of Gostomel, circling over a certain place and shooting, in response they opened fire on them. I call my friends, but nobody knows anything."
Igor says that he didn't believe in the war ("he didn't prepare, because we were told that nothing would happen"), that's why he didn't refuel on time and didn't leave Bucha in the first days - he was afraid to stay with the child on the road in the middle of the night.
And then it was learned that most of the bridges had been blown up and that the Russians were shooting at civilian cars. So he stayed in Bucha, took his son to his parents, and he and his neighbors cooked food in the yard of the house in the center of town.
After the destruction of the first Russian column on February 27, Igor, like many other residents of Bucha, enlisted in the local militia, but it was all quite nominal - he was not given a weapon, but the man helped in any way he could.
When the occupation began, their yard was quiet for a long time.
The Russians entered there only on March 15 - they broke down the doors in the apartments of one of the entrances, they lived on four to five floors, and there were snipers on the higher floors.
At that moment, Igor managed to find fuel to exit through the "green corridor", but the Russians cut the wheels of his car. And then they came for him.

The man himself believes that they got the lists of Teroboronov soldiers from somewhere and went to the address.
"They came home, and my son is engaged in shooting and was taking out cartridges from the shooting range. They immediately got into it. Then they looked at the phone, and in the settings it was that photos and videos from Telegram and Viber were inserted, memory. And there were videos of burning Russian equipment. They didn't understand it and said - you filmed it, you filmed our equipment," says Igor.
"They taped the hands and eyes. And they said: tell us where the weapons are, where the enemy weapons are. I answer that I don't know anything, that I signed up at night, when everyone else was signing up. Then they said: well, sit down, think, you have half an hour. Whatever you say - we will shoot at you", adds Igor.
They left him sitting on the bench, and after a while they took him to the first floor and started beating him:
"They hit me in the head with a butt, a knee in the head. They said: give me your hand. I'll cut off one of your fingers and you'll see how you speak. And I felt how they stuck a knife near the hand and the neck."
Igor was not killed, but they kept him in captivity for two days, occasionally interrogated him about the same thing and threatened to kill him. They also threatened to find his son or take him somewhere to the "special units of Donetsk, who are very angry with you".
On the second day they said, "Think, for in the morning we will go and shoot you."
On March 17, the man was taken somewhere, as he thought, to be shot, but eventually the duct tape was cut and he was released. The neighbors thought he had already been killed.
About the Russians, he recalls that several of them were from Omsk, they were called only by nicknames ("139th", "140th"), and he remembers only one name, Yaryom - a young Russian soldier who was laughed at, because he smoked in his position near the sniper.
"I dreamed all this for a while, I couldn't sleep normally. Sometimes only alcohol helped. But then we woke up and kept doing something, it helped. And so in a few months, everything disappeared mentally," says Igor about the consequences.
"Now sometimes it seems as if nothing happened, as if I dreamed all this. But understand that this is not a dream," adds Igor.

A friend's story: gunshots

Natalija Verbova is the wife of Andrij Verbovoj, a Teroboron soldier who was killed by the Russian army in Jablunska Street on March 4, 2022. A group of poorly armed fighters that only a few days before joined the territorial defense was not able to withdraw from the blockade and they hid in a nearby house.

They were later discovered there by the Russians and taken to a nearby base. After torture and harsh interrogation, one of the men could not stand it and confessed that they were Teroboron. That man was released and the others were shot. Andrij Verbovoi is among those killed.
"The pain gets worse over time, because memories eat you up. I see people on the street walking and hugging each other, and I start to remember that my husband and I used to walk like that. I realize that I have lost the closest person," says Natalija Verbova a year ago later.
At the site of the shooting, the woman and other relatives of the victims made a small place of remembrance, and the city council promised to build a monument, although the work has not yet begun.
However, there are always fresh flowers here.

In a strange way, Natalija met a man at this place who confessed Teroboron to the Russians and thus managed to survive.
"Aleksandar Turovski (father of the other murdered Sviatoslav Turovski. - Ed.) and I were just making a memorial at the place of their death with rails and photos. And then he was detained, an investigative experiment was conducted with him. I saw him personally," the woman recalls.
"Emotionally, I wanted to ask him a few questions. But the prosecutor then introduced himself and said it would be better if he did it later. He was a witness to the shooting and the person who saw those Russians, communicated with them. So, in order not to interfere with the investigation, I decided not to ask him anything," notes Natalija.
She, together with other relatives of Teroboronov residents of Bucha, is working to get them officially recognized.
Now their hopes are tied to the new law, according to which the status of combatants should be given to volunteers who fought in the first month of the invasion, even without official registration in the Armed Forces.
Although Bucha itself has already recognized its defenders - Andrij Verbovoj received the status of an honorary citizen of the city, a commemorative action was held on the anniversary of the shooting, their photos are placed on the Alley of Remembrance in the central square, and flowers are periodically brought to the graves from the city council.
Natalija Verbova admits that it is very difficult for her to live in the same house where she and Andrij spent 25 years: "But my son wanted to return to Bucha, and we lived here all these years."
"Butch is alive, she was reborn, life is coming back here, people are coming back. But as a woman who lost her husband, the feelings are very painful for me. A lot of people died here and we need to talk about it," says Natalia Verbova.

Anatoly Prihodko, Andriy Matvijchuk, Andriy Verbovoj, Denis Rudenko, Andriy Dvornikov, Svyatoslav Turovski, Valery Kotenko and Vitaly Karpenko were among the soldiers of Teroboronov Buch who were shot. Behind each of them are families, children and parents.
After the genocide

Before the full invasion, 53,000 people lived in Bucha. According to various data, the number of killed residents of Bucha during the incomplete month of Russian occupation varies from 419 (mayor Anatoly Fedoruk's data on killed civilians) to 461 (data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). There are also missing persons.
Purely mathematically, the losses are smaller than the percentage of the entire former population of Bucha. And at the same time, this is a huge number for the city, hundreds of lives lost and thousands of people who lost their relatives, a trauma that will remain here forever.
Many residents of Bucha who left during or after the occupation never returned to the city.
Here is what teacher Andriy Kucevalov, who remained in the city during the entire occupation, told BBC Ukraine: "According to colleagues, about a quarter of the children have not returned to Bucha until now - they went abroad, to other regions of Ukraine, or died." At the same time, many children with the status of internally displaced persons appeared".
"In many families, the men returned to Bucha, while the women and children remained abroad. In my opinion, about three quarters of the population that previously lived in the city returned to Bucha. Again, there are many internally displaced persons," he adds. Kucevalov.
According to Andrij Kucevalov, it is unlikely that many will return to the city, and among the dead are many more active citizens.
As for the nature of people, it made it felt in a very unique way in the conditions of the occupied city:
"People showed themselves especially clearly during the occupation - some suddenly became robbers and scoundrels. Instead, other ordinary people showed great humanity, support and help."
He also suggests that many who spent March 2022 in Bucha had a noticeable change in consciousness.

"Post-traumatic stress (although I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist) can be seen in reactions to harsh loud sounds. In communication, I often hear arguments: "I was in the occupation and everyone is to blame", or the message "you don't understand us - you weren't in the occupation". For many, PTSD (probably for me as well) manifests itself in significant fatalism.  Anxiety, shelter? But no - it will come, it will come. Even many children react like this. Although it is sad," he describes.

Natalija Verbova talks about the impact of what happened on the minds of the residents of Bucha.
"I was at the notary's office, and there was a woman sitting next to me who first calmly told me something and drew up the documents. And then she started crying. She told me that the Russians killed her husband here in Bucha and that there is a photo of his body on the Internet. And this woman says, who can't look at this photo, it's not like walking down the street where his body was. And there are many of them," notes the woman.
Another trauma is the fear that the Russians might return.
Immediately after the liberation of Bucha last April, many residents of Bucha who survived the occupation were seriously anticipating the second wave of Russian attacks on Bucha on May 9.
"And then they will surely kill everyone," warned one of the interlocutors in that city, which still smelled of "the smoke of the occupation."

But within a year, these fears were dulled.
"About the repeated attack I will say the following - several times during the year IPSO waves flew that "tomorrow they will attack from Belarus", saying that "my brother-in-law's godfather told my cousin" Some even left for a week or two. But in general, everyone believes in ZSU" - says Andrij Kucevalov.
Igor Zaderigolova, a former prisoner, also does not believe in the new Russian occupation: "There is no fear that they will return. Many famous boys who were on Dmitrovka, Kapitanivka (The site of the fiercest fighting on the Zhytomyr highway to the south) said that no one would come here again."
In the vicinity of Bucha, you can now often meet military personnel who occasionally undergo defense training.

Bucha is alive

Despite all the injuries and losses, Bucha is still alive. Children can be heard playing in the yards (a total of more than 9,500 children currently study in Bucha schools). Transport and shops are working.
The city deals not only with material restoration, but also with memory - for the anniversary of the deoccupation, an alley was built in the central square in honor of the fallen residents of Bucha.

They also restored the large flag that the Russians destroyed at the turn to Vorzel - where "Azov" volunteers tried to stop the Russian armored vehicles. The Bucha Defenders Square has now been built on this site.

And the local community TheBuchaCity records a series of videos "The City of Unbreakable", in which Bucha residents who survived the occupation tell their stories - this is a kind of media symbol of the city's revival.
"Bucha recovered quite quickly after the occupation. Even during the power outage, aggregates were actively brought in and this made it possible for the city not to collapse, and business survived, almost everything recovered," says Andrij Kucevalov.
"Works on the restoration and reconstruction of residential buildings are going slower. There are various reasons for this, but Bucha managed to attract funds from many restoration funds. This is especially visible in education - damaged institutions, machines and equipment are being repaired," he adds.
And Igor Zaderigolova sums it up: "The Bucha is even stronger now than it was. We've been through so much."
And back in February, they started demolishing the biggest symbol of destruction - the charred body of the dead colossus "Epicenter" - for reconstruction.