The smiles are rare, the memories still too present. But a sign that life is gradually resuming in Boutcha, the inhabitants wave a wave of the hand to day visitors, so happy to see new faces, now peaceful. Next to a boned tank and a gutted building, Vitali photographs the carnage.
“I buried her”
He explains doing it for “History”. “I want my grandchildren to know what the Russians did here. I’m taking pictures now because after that it will be too late, everything will have been cleaned up,” he continues.
A few meters from a children’s playground, a grave was hastily erected under the bombs. Here, between two tarmac alleys, under a mound of earth, rests temporarily Inna, 45 years old. “She went out to fetch water and she died in a bombardment. It was I who buried her,” said her neighbor Ruslan.
psychological scars
A week after the Russians left, there is still no gas or electricity in the city. So the inhabitants make reserves of wood. At the foot of a building, Valentina prepares soup for her father over a makeshift fire. “Do you want to taste? Be careful, it’s hot, huh! We have reserves of potatoes because we have a vegetable garden. And the rest, we were given”, she says.
“We have become more united, she continues. We help each other, we talk to each other. We need one or two years to return to normal life. But there are psychological scars. 16 bombs in our neighborhood, it’s very difficult”.
On the other side of the street, a convoy of official cars stops. Descends Yuri Cherdinstov, a forensic expert. “We are a group of specialists with the prosecutor. We come to look for everything we can find on the attacks of the Russians that there have been here”, he assures. So that the story of the deadly passage of the Russians is not just words. But also evidence and maybe even, one day, a trial.