It was, said Taras Schevchenko, like a scene from a film.
At 6am on the morning of February 24th, from the vantage point of the kitchen window of his fifth-storey apartment overlooking Gostomel airport, on the northern outskirts of the Ukrainian town of Bucha, Schevchenko watched as about 20 Russian helicopters flew into vision, spilling paratroopers on to the tarmac below.
“I felt as if I was in the movies, you know, I saw all the helicopters, I even saw the faces of those paratroopers.”
This was the moment that the war began for Bucha, a town 55km north-west from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which is swiftly becoming synonymous with the worst atrocities of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The events that unfolded over the following days, Schevchenko (43) said, were unimaginable.
Bodies rolled over by tanks turned into “human rugs” while Russians shot dead even the elderly who got in their way, he said.
Russian snipers shot the men who tried to escape across fields, it is claimed, and claims of the rapes and murder of young girls, which have yet to be independently verified, put terror in the hearts of those who remained.
As witnesses have come forward, however, and photographic evidence of bodies on Bucha’s roads has emerged from the newly recaptured territory, the claims of mass war crimes by the occupying Russian troops appear to be all too real.
On Saturday, AFP reported that 20 bodies, all in civilian clothing, had been found strewn across a single street, one with his hands tied behind his back and a white cloth and his Ukrainian passport left open beside his body. “All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, said, adding that 280 other bodies had been buried in mass graves elsewhere in the town.
Schevchenko, a martial arts coach in a kindergarten, and his mother, Yevdokia Shevchenko (77), with whom he lived in the north of Bucha, recalls that it had gone quiet for three days after Putin’s troops landed.
They talked about what to do, whether they should escape. Those few who decided to leave on that first day were seen as overreacting by the majority of those in Schevchenko’s block.
The normality of those first 72 hours was an illusion.
“We saw them [The Russians] on the third day when there was a massive shootout by our building with Bucha’s territorial defence. At first I decided to stay because I was thinking: where to go? I had nowhere to go. There was fear, you know. Secondly, we aren’t that rich to completely change our lives in one day. On the third day, I realised that it is too late to run away somewhere or change something because the war was literally around my house, on my street. There were tanks driving down my street. It is very frightening when they shoot, it’s such a sound, a roar.”
By day four, there was panic. “Everybody was looking [FOR]some ways out of there on the internet, Telegram or Viber chats. Anyone who had their own cars just fled, risking everything. Our building has 69 apartments and there are only four families remaining.”
Schevchenko’s mother, Yevdokia, terrified by the fighting on her doorstep, moved down into the block’s damp cold basement of just 20 sq metres, lit only by candles, where she joined eight other families, including one three-year-old child and an 86-year-old woman.
Yevdokia would stay there for the next 13 days and nights, with only a bucket as a toilet. The older woman, Schevchenko said, may still be in the basement. “She hugged an icon. All the time she was there she was hugging the icon.”
[removed]
I wish I believed in hell having read all of that.
And what does this have to do with Ireland other than being in an Irish newspaper?
Edit: Absolutely nothing cool cool cool
Edit 2: everyone who downvoted this is a poo poo head pass it on
The atrocities in Bucha demonstrate why occupied Ukrainian territory needs to be liberated.
If Europe pushes Ukraine into an early ceasefire with millions of their citizens still under the Russian boot, just so we can get cheaper gas and oil, we really should be ashamed of ourselves.
The best way to save civilian lives is with military aid. We can see this with how the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been able to breakthrough to Chernihiv and Sumy.
One horrible photo shows a man, apparently the husband of the mayor, left to die in a sewer pipe. I don’t know how anyone hides behind “neutrality”. You have to decide what side you are on when it comes to something like this.
Any word yet from Mick, Ming and Clare on whether NATO is responsible for the torture and murder of these men, women and children?
Can we send the javelins now?
Our obsession with “being neutral” seems so fucking parochial in the face of this.
I couldn’t stomach it earlier, was looking at it on Twitter, then I was even more sickened by the people claiming it was staged, it’s sheer hell. My heads in my hands.
I know there is a lot of love for Michael D on this subreddit but can we all agree that maybe his John Lennon inspired idealism for a neutral Ukraine is a terrible take when these are the neighbours they have.
Mick Wallace and Clare Daly should be refused service by everywhere in Ireland for continuing to support Russia.
I remember seeing a video of a Russian tank shooting an elderly couple sitting down in a car.
Russian military is full of cowards.
this isnt sub relevant
One positive thing out of this is finally Europeans see what Russia truly is. They were commiting genocides and war crimes on a level or above of Nazi Germany and Ukrainians were always their target. Russia as a nation has way more problems just than Putin. Stop idolizing them.
Has anyone got a list of Irish companies still operating in Russia? Kerry Group was called out yesterday.
Honestly I am surprised it took this long for mass graves to start showing up. After all, we are talking about an army that raped their way into Berlin. Katyn Forest massacre was another day in the office for these people.
the rape of nanking should have been a warning not a blueprint
18 comments
It was, said Taras Schevchenko, like a scene from a film.
At 6am on the morning of February 24th, from the vantage point of the kitchen window of his fifth-storey apartment overlooking Gostomel airport, on the northern outskirts of the Ukrainian town of Bucha, Schevchenko watched as about 20 Russian helicopters flew into vision, spilling paratroopers on to the tarmac below.
“I felt as if I was in the movies, you know, I saw all the helicopters, I even saw the faces of those paratroopers.”
This was the moment that the war began for Bucha, a town 55km north-west from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which is swiftly becoming synonymous with the worst atrocities of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The events that unfolded over the following days, Schevchenko (43) said, were unimaginable.
Bodies rolled over by tanks turned into “human rugs” while Russians shot dead even the elderly who got in their way, he said.
Russian snipers shot the men who tried to escape across fields, it is claimed, and claims of the rapes and murder of young girls, which have yet to be independently verified, put terror in the hearts of those who remained.
As witnesses have come forward, however, and photographic evidence of bodies on Bucha’s roads has emerged from the newly recaptured territory, the claims of mass war crimes by the occupying Russian troops appear to be all too real.
On Saturday, AFP reported that 20 bodies, all in civilian clothing, had been found strewn across a single street, one with his hands tied behind his back and a white cloth and his Ukrainian passport left open beside his body. “All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, said, adding that 280 other bodies had been buried in mass graves elsewhere in the town.
Schevchenko, a martial arts coach in a kindergarten, and his mother, Yevdokia Shevchenko (77), with whom he lived in the north of Bucha, recalls that it had gone quiet for three days after Putin’s troops landed.
They talked about what to do, whether they should escape. Those few who decided to leave on that first day were seen as overreacting by the majority of those in Schevchenko’s block.
The normality of those first 72 hours was an illusion.
“We saw them [The Russians] on the third day when there was a massive shootout by our building with Bucha’s territorial defence. At first I decided to stay because I was thinking: where to go? I had nowhere to go. There was fear, you know. Secondly, we aren’t that rich to completely change our lives in one day. On the third day, I realised that it is too late to run away somewhere or change something because the war was literally around my house, on my street. There were tanks driving down my street. It is very frightening when they shoot, it’s such a sound, a roar.”
By day four, there was panic. “Everybody was looking [FOR]some ways out of there on the internet, Telegram or Viber chats. Anyone who had their own cars just fled, risking everything. Our building has 69 apartments and there are only four families remaining.”
Schevchenko’s mother, Yevdokia, terrified by the fighting on her doorstep, moved down into the block’s damp cold basement of just 20 sq metres, lit only by candles, where she joined eight other families, including one three-year-old child and an 86-year-old woman.
Yevdokia would stay there for the next 13 days and nights, with only a bucket as a toilet. The older woman, Schevchenko said, may still be in the basement. “She hugged an icon. All the time she was there she was hugging the icon.”
[removed]
I wish I believed in hell having read all of that.
And what does this have to do with Ireland other than being in an Irish newspaper?
Edit: Absolutely nothing cool cool cool
Edit 2: everyone who downvoted this is a poo poo head pass it on
The atrocities in Bucha demonstrate why occupied Ukrainian territory needs to be liberated.
If Europe pushes Ukraine into an early ceasefire with millions of their citizens still under the Russian boot, just so we can get cheaper gas and oil, we really should be ashamed of ourselves.
The best way to save civilian lives is with military aid. We can see this with how the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been able to breakthrough to Chernihiv and Sumy.
One horrible photo shows a man, apparently the husband of the mayor, left to die in a sewer pipe. I don’t know how anyone hides behind “neutrality”. You have to decide what side you are on when it comes to something like this.
Any word yet from Mick, Ming and Clare on whether NATO is responsible for the torture and murder of these men, women and children?
Can we send the javelins now?
Our obsession with “being neutral” seems so fucking parochial in the face of this.
I couldn’t stomach it earlier, was looking at it on Twitter, then I was even more sickened by the people claiming it was staged, it’s sheer hell. My heads in my hands.
I know there is a lot of love for Michael D on this subreddit but can we all agree that maybe his John Lennon inspired idealism for a neutral Ukraine is a terrible take when these are the neighbours they have.
Mick Wallace and Clare Daly should be refused service by everywhere in Ireland for continuing to support Russia.
I remember seeing a video of a Russian tank shooting an elderly couple sitting down in a car.
Russian military is full of cowards.
this isnt sub relevant
One positive thing out of this is finally Europeans see what Russia truly is. They were commiting genocides and war crimes on a level or above of Nazi Germany and Ukrainians were always their target. Russia as a nation has way more problems just than Putin. Stop idolizing them.
Has anyone got a list of Irish companies still operating in Russia? Kerry Group was called out yesterday.
Honestly I am surprised it took this long for mass graves to start showing up. After all, we are talking about an army that raped their way into Berlin. Katyn Forest massacre was another day in the office for these people.
the rape of nanking should have been a warning not a blueprint
Fuck me what a read. Harrowing shit.
What a load of bollox