12 Time April 25/May 2, 2022
to document apparent Russian war
crimes. A team of experts from France
has come to help Ukraine gather docu-
mentation for an international tribu-
nal. “The evidence is mounting,” U.S.
President Joe Biden told reporters on
April 12. “I called it genocide because
it’s become clearer and clearer that
Putin is just trying to wipe out even
the idea of being Ukrainian.”
Moscow knows how bad this is.
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow has
accused Ukraine of “staging” the mas-
sacre to make the Russian forces look
bad. Putin called Bucha a “fake.” His
propaganda channels offered theories
to undermine the grim reality with
doubt. They suggested that crisis ac-
tors had posed as corpses in videos
of Bucha. They claimed that “foreign
mercenaries” came to town and killed
people after the Russians withdrew.
But the barbarity was too blatant,
and witnessed by too many people.
The local government estimates that
around 3,700 people remained in the
town during the occupation. Their
stories of looting, torture, rape, and
murder are consistent with the evi-
dence emerging from the ground.
Before the invasion, life in Bucha
centered around the Church of St. An-
drew, whose golden domes reach up-
ward from a hill near city hall. The
parish priest, Father Andriy Halavin,
was officiating a funeral on the sec-
ond day of the invasion, Feb. 25, as a
battle raged for control of an airport
just north of town. Explosions and he-
licopters ripped through the air, close
enough to drown out his sermon at the
graveside.
The battle went on for several days.
The Russians needed that airport to
land an invading force outside the
capital, and the Ukrainians put up a
ferocious fight, shelling the runways
and blowing up a bridge to block the
advance of Russian tanks into Kyiv.
“All of this was happening over our
heads—the flames, the booms,” Hala-
vin recalls.
Control of Bucha changed hands at
least twice before the Russians man-
aged to seize the town in the first week
of March. The battle had cost them
dearly, and it left them angry. More
than a dozen burned-out Russian
tanks and personnel carriers stood in
the streets. As the Russians dug in,
they set up artillery positions in a local
school and moved into the dormitories
at the children’s summer camp.
Halavin considered keeping his
church open as a sanctuary for locals.
But he says he changed his mind
after the Russian troops began going
house to house, kicking in doors
and dragging entire families into the
streets. At one point the church itself
came under fire, leaving deep gashes
in the walls. “The soldiers were
shooting at anything that moved.
Men, women, children,” Halavin told
me. “To cross the street was to stare
death in the eyes.”The priest stashed away his robes
and did his best to stay out of sight. A
few times during the monthlong occu-
pation, he snuck back into the church
to pray and fetch some candles for his
home. By the second week, the smell
of death in parts of Bucha became
hard to bear. The morgue was full, and
it was too dangerous to take bodies
to the cemetery. Many victims were
left in the road or covered with just
enough soil to keep the dogs away.
A local coroner then asked
Halavin to help organize a burial
in the churchyard. The priest
consented. On March 10, they dug
a trench and waited for a truck to
come from the morgue with a few
dozen bodies. “There was no way to
have a ceremony or any sermons at
the grave,” he says. “It was all done
quickly, with a few hurried prayers.”‘The soldiers were
shooting at anything
that moved. Men,
women, children.’
FATHER ANDRIY HALAVIN△
Dead bodies found
in the basement of a
children’s summer camp