Testimonial of a Bucha survivor - my translation below. Apologies for bad English.
He was given 20 minutes to collect the body parts of his friend and bury them.
This is Mykola. He is 53. He lives in Bucha. Mykola stutters a lot. Only after lighting a cigarette does he begin his story.
Mykola has been staying in the basement for 34 days. He could have left the city, but being the apartment complex manager of a five-story building, he couldn’t leave other people. On the first day of the fighting in Bucha, a shell flew into the window of his flat, pierced the wall, and got stuck into a child’s bed, setting it on fire. Thankfully, his family had already evacuated by then. After extinguishing the fire, he gathered all the elderly and the women and moved to the basement.
When russians occupied the town, they were breaking into every house. All the men were led outside and stripped naked - they were looking for tattoos (“nazi” tattoos - they believe that all Azov soldiers are marked with them and are hiding among civilians). Two of Mykola’s friends, Leonid and Sergiy, were under 50 years old, and one more man, also called Leonid, was much younger. When russian soldiers saw his birth date on his passport, they said he is eligible for joining the army and executed him.
Mykola buried Leonid right there, in the yard, near the transformer box. A bloodstain remains on the place where he was killed.
A few days later, Sergiy also was killed. He stepped outside the basement to smoke a cigarette and was shot on spot. Just like that, without any words or warnings.
When the fight got intense, the russians went mad. Before that, people could leave the basements to cook some food outside or just get a breath of fresh air. At this point, the people decided to lock themselves inside. When evening came, russians started shooting everywhere. They yelled and demanded the people let them in the basement. Most likely, they planned on executing everyone before leaving the city. We know that to be true because this happened to a different house on a neighboring street.
When russians didn’t manage to break the door, they threw a grenade on the stairway. On the other side of it, Leonid - the only man beside Mykola who stayed alive - was holding the door. The people inside heard the explosion, and then silence. For a full day, his dead body was lying there, on the blood-stained stairway. On the next day, russians knocked on the door and said that (the people) had 20 minutes to bury the man. When Mykola stepped outside, he saw the head and legs of his friend, torn apart from his body.
Mykola gathered the remains and dug another grave - the third one. Due to his old age and limited time, he didn’t manage to dig it deep enough. Now he worries that once it starts raining, it will wash off the sand and the stray dogs will come to eat the remains.
Among all this horror, pain, and death it is easy to lose hope. But today Mykola is my hero. He saw the worst that humankind has to offer but didn’t lose his own humanity. During the interview, he was holding back his tears. After we turned off the camera, he started crying and thanked us for listening to him.
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