From Boutcha to Kramatorsk, Ukrainians pay homage to their dead
Maria Kourbet meditates on the grave of her son, who was killed in Bakhmout, during a ceremony organized at Boutcha Cemetery to mark the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine February 24, 2023. EMILIO MORENATTI / AP
“Remembrance of Russian crimes”: In Boutcha, a town near Kiev hit hard by the Russian occupation, or near the front in Kramatorsk (east), Ukrainians commemorated the one-year-old victims of the war that broke out there on Friday. A small photo exhibition in the Saint-André de Boutcha church commemorates the dark hours of this martyred city in the north-western suburbs of the Ukrainian capital.
A mass grave was dug next to the building, which is still partially under construction, to hastily bury victims of the occupation ahead of liberation by Ukrainian forces at the end of March 2022, to commemorate Russian crimes and terror,” said an Orthodox priest during a ceremony “for peace in Ukraine and her defenders” in front of a hundred parishioners who came to meditate.
Butcha is a symbol of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine; The latter announced that they had discovered hundreds of bodies of civilians there.
Also read: Life is slowly returning in Boutcha, a martyr town in the Kiev suburbs
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“During the occupation, we stayed there with my wife for a month. We didn’t move, we saw all these horrors,” says Serguiï Zamostiane, a 62-year-old retired teacher, as he exits the church with red eyes. “More than fifty of our soldiers and 450 civilians are already buried in the cemetery [que les Russes] Shot (…). For what ? explain me why “Interrogates the sixty-year-old who says he believes” in victory “Ukrainian.
He says he lived on Yablonska Street immediately after the occupation ended, where the bodies of about twenty civilians were found.
Mykhailo Sikirin, a 30-year-old Ukrainian soldier who was killed on February 18 in Chypylivka, Luhansk region, was buried on February 24, 2023 in Kramatorsk. YASUYOSHI CHIBA / AFP
Kramatorsk, almost 700 kilometers east of Bucha, also buried its dead. This Donbass city is very close to the frontline and Bakhmout, where Ukrainian forces have been resisting Russian army attacks for months. Under a gray sky, Mykhaïlo Sikirine was buried in a coffin painted in the yellow and blue colors of Ukraine. The 30-year-old soldier, a member of the National Guard, was killed in a bomb attack on February 18 while he was in a trench in Chypylivka, Luhansk region. “He died for the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine,” explains the priest at the foot of the grave. “It’s the greatest sacrifice a person aspires to,” he adds. Three comrades of the buried soldier then fired three shots in the air together. “It is thanks to the actions of these soldiers that we are safe and alive here,” the priest said, watching as Ukrainian flags fluttered over twenty-one other graves dug at a recently excavated cemetery.