THENEWYORKER,M AY9, 2022 59
the length of the occupation and looked
frail and underfed. Havryliuk filled her
arms with whatever she could find—
soap, shampoo, beauty products, clothes.
“What size are you?” she asked, foist
ing on the woman three pairs of shoes
that had been left behind.
The woman demurred. “What about
you?”
“We’re moving to Zakarpattia.”
“You’re not coming back?”
“Not anytime soon.”
“Are you going to cremate Sergey
and Roman?”
“I don’t know.” Noticing a pencil jar
on its side, Havryliuk stood it upright.
A while later, a neighbor named
Nadejda Cherednichenko arrived. Her
vest and hooded sweatshirt were tat
tered, her hands cut and blistered, her
nails filled with dirt. After embracing
Havryliuk, she told her that her son, a
twenty sevenyearold electrician named
Volodymyr, had been detained in early
March. After three weeks, Chered
nichenko had approached two Russian
soldiers patrolling outside of her house.
She recalled to Havryliuk, “I said to them,
‘I’m asking you as a mother. Is my son
alive?’” One of the soldiers had re
sponded, “You don’t have a son anymore.”
A neighbor had taken Chered
nichenko to a basement where Volo
dymyr had been shot through the ear.
All five fingers on his left hand had
been wrenched backward.
Havryliuk listened in silence as
Cherednichenko recounted all this, oc
casionally nodding. Although she had
no words for her friend, her own loss
seemed to have made her someone in
whom Cherednichenko could confide.
Cherednichenko later showed me her
garden, where she had buried Volody
myr. It is traditional for Ukrainians to
leave some of the deceased’s preferred
food on a grave, but during the occu
pation the residents of Bucha barely
had enough sustenance to survive. Volo
dymyr had loved caffeine, and Chered
nichenko had found a small packet of
instant coffee to place on the otherwise
unmarked mound of dirt.
After Cherednichenko left, Havryliuk
went into the front yard. The fence had
been knocked over, and when she moved
some of the lumber she found her other
dog crushed underneath.
Havryliuk put her face into her hands.
Her shoulders quaked. For the first time
since returning home, she allowed her
self to weep.D
own the road from Havryliuk’s
place, charred corpses lay beside a
garbage pile. Locals said that Russians
in a tank had dumped them and lit them
on fire. (Later, police would tape off the
scene and place yellow markers identi
fying six victims.) One appeared to be
a woman, another a child—though they
were so severely mutilated that it was
hard to say for sure. Orphaned cats and
dogs sniffed around the burned and sev
ered legs and torsos.
Such atrocities were not limited to
IvanaFranka Street. According to the
chief regional prosecutor, more than six
hundred bodies were found in the dis
trict. Researchers with Human Rights
Watch reported “extensive evidence of
summary executions, other unlawful
killings, enforced disappearances, and
torture.” At least one man was decapi
tated. The office of the attorney gen
eral released photographs of men who
had been bound and executed in “a tor
ture chamber” in the basement of a chil
dren’s sanatorium. Lyudmyla Denisova,
Ukraine’s humanrights commissioner,
told the BBC that two dozen women
and girls, between the ages of fourteen
and twenty four, “were systematically
raped” while being held captive in an
other Bucha basement. Nine had be
come pregnant. A Times contributorphotographed the corpse of a woman
shot in the head in a potato cellar, naked
apart from a fur coat.
When the Russians first invaded
Bucha, a team of volunteers risked their
lives collecting bodies and delivering
them to the local morgue. After ten
days, with the morgue at capacity and
lacking refrigeration, residents dug a
mass grave behind a local Orthodox
church. As corpses piled up, a tractor
covered them with earth. When thefirst grave was full, a second was exca
vated, and then a third. I visited the
church the day after I met Iryna Hav
ryliuk. Bulky black bags were still
heaped in the third pit, and limbs pro
truded from the mud. The priest, Fa
ther Andrii Halavin, was in the nave,
repairing windows shattered by projec
tiles. “It’s not just here,” he told me.
“People are buried all over Bucha.”
He wanted to show me a park. On
the way, we passed a street where Ukrai
nian drones had wiped out a convoy
from the first Russian unit to enter the
neighborhood. The turrets, engines, can
nons, and tracks of dismembered tanks
were strewn across a fourhundredyard
stretch of road. The destruction was ex
traordinary. Several residents told me
that the conduct of later waves of Rus
sian soldiers had been much worse, per
haps out of vengeance for the first.
A van next to the park was riddled
with bullet holes. The Russian word
for “children” had been painted on its
hood. White sheets hung from its side
mirrors. “They were trying to leave,”
Father Halavin said of the passengers.
He didn’t know their identities; nor had
whoever buried them. The only marker
on a plot of fresh soil in the grass was
a license plate that had been removed
from the van’s rear bumper.
Curiously, the park was littered with
horse manure. Father Halavin explained
that a stable had been bombed. The
horses that survived had run wild through
the suburb, crazed by the incessant shell
ing. When I asked where they were now,
Halavin shrugged.
Whatever had happened to the
horses, stray pets were everywhere, each
attesting to an absent master. On a small
street across the tracks from Ivana
Franka, an old woman lay face down in
her doorway; a trembling dog stood at
her shoulder, barking over and over.
When I opened a can of tuna, the dog
ravenously devoured it. I went inside
and found a second woman, also elderly,
lying dead on the kitchen floor. Neigh
bors later told me that they had been
sisters, both in their seventies. Their
names were Nina and Lyudmyla. In the
only bedroom, two narrow mattresses
were pushed together and covered by a
single blanket. Their little house teemed
with hardcover books. Russian transla
tions of French classics filled half a dozen