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This story is part of a four-part series where the victims offer a heartbreaking insight into Ukraine’s allegations of war crimes against Russia. See the 3 stories.
Russian soldiers were pointing at Yevhen Kulakivskiy’s wife, Natalia, when he began speaking.
“I think maybe they would have told him they would do something to me unless I spoke,” Natalia Kulakivska says from her home in Bucha.
It was March 18, three weeks after the invasion, when Russian soldiers arrived at his front door armed with machine guns.
Natalia still doesn’t know for sure if Yevhen is alive or dead. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Natalia watched as Yevhen was forced to kneel at gunpoint as the Russians seized her cell phones, computer, camera, gold and jewelry. Looting is a war crime, but the soldiers don’t seem to care.
Finally, they told Natalia it was “delivery.” But they took her husband.
“Why did you come here? For what? Why did you come here to set us free? ”He asked them, with tears on his face.
“No, we didn’t come here to free you, we came here to take you Crimea and Donbas,” one soldier said.
“It simply came to our notice then. What are you doing here? ” Natalia replied.
“Your government doesn’t want to give them to us,” the soldier said.
Yevhen is among the thousands of Ukrainians who have disappeared since Russia invaded on February 24. It is still difficult to know exactly how many, but the Ukrainian national police have received more than 9,000 reports of missing people since Russia invaded.
Natalia Kulakivska with her missing loved ones. From top right: nephew Vladyslav Bondarenko; Brother-in-law Serhiy Lyubych and her husband Yevhen Kulakivskiy, Bondarenko now confirmed the death. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity. Many of the practices associated with making someone disappear (torture, deprivation of a fair trial and inhuman treatment) are also war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.
In a four-part series, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reveal new details of the apparent war crimes committed in Ukraine, such as enforced disappearances, torture, unlawful killings and indiscriminate bombing, based on first-hand accounts of casualties. witnesses and forensics. researchers.
The International Criminal Court has described Ukraine as a “crime scene” and has deployed its largest team of detectives ever in the country to assist in multiple investigations.
Although at this stage it is impossible to say exactly how many war crimes have been committed in Ukraine, stacking and prosecuting each case will be a long and arduous process for investigators.
According to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova, Russia has committed more than 22,500 war crimes and crimes of aggression against Ukraine since the invasion. For its part, Russia has repeatedly denied that it has targeted civilians.
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Matilda Bogner, an Australian who heads the UN human rights mission in Ukraine, says investigators at her agency have so far documented 270 cases of arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance committed by Russian forces. He has also identified 12 cases committed by the Ukrainian authorities.
“That’s only a fraction of the actual number of cases,” he warns. “The Russian side has not spoken, it has not given figures on how many people it has.”
Bogner says enforced disappearances are terrifying not only for the person but for their family.
“It’s also a form of torture or mistreatment of families, keeping them in the dark,” he says. “And that’s one of the key elements of enforced disappearance: the family also becomes a victim.”
Yevhen, 42, was not the first to disappear from Natalia’s family. Her sister’s husband, Serhiy Lyubych, 37, had gone to collect water for the neighbors on March 7, as the city was already cut off from electricity, gas and running water. He never returned, and left his wife Snizhana wondering what had happened to him.
The battle for Bucha, a satellite city of Kyiv of about 37,000, was still raging and no one could figure anything out. Fearing the worst, the family evacuated the couple’s two children with a stranger.
On March 12, Russia had full control of the city.
Eleven days after Natalia’s brother-in-law disappeared, her husband was caught right in front of her. Hours later, his nephew Vladyslav Bondarenko, 20, also disappeared. He is now dead.
“Three men were taken out of my family. We’ll never see any of them again,” Natalia says.
For more than a month, Natalia had no idea where they were. They checked basements and morgues but found nothing.
Then, on April 20, weeks after the Russians had fled Bucha, a man who had been released by Russia as part of a prisoner exchange appeared on the street.
A man is overshadowed by the ruins of one of the many buildings hit by Russian bombing and missiles in Bucha. Credit: Kate Geraghty
The man, who does not want to be identified, was detained with her husband and nephew in large freezers at an airport in the nearby city of Hostomel, before they were sent to Belarus on March 22. Along the way, Vladyslav panicked and tried. to escape from a truck. He was shot dead by Russian soldiers. His body was buried by strangers.
Days after learning of her nephew’s death, Natalia learned from other freed Ukrainians that Yevhen and Serhiy had been taken to prisons in Russia.
Since then, the Russian Red Cross has confirmed that Serhiy is alive in a prison near the city of Bryansk, but there is no news of her husband.
“I don’t know who can influence the Russians, I don’t know who can influence those who decide the fate of my relatives and loved ones and thousands of other people,” Natalia says. “But I ask, I ask, if there is a chance, that they reach their hearts and that this is over.”
More than 1300 civilians in and around Bucha were killed by Russian soldiers. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Crimes “must be investigated”
After Ukrainian soldiers released Bucha on March 31, authorities had to exhume a mass grave of 117 people on the grounds of the city’s Orthodox church. Many had been taken there by family and friends after being shot on the street or beaten to death.
Father Andriy Halavin stands at the back of the church, in front of the monument and plaque at the site of the mass grave of civilians killed by Russian soldiers. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Andriy Halavin, the priest of St. Andrew the First Called Church, says many residents still don’t know what happened to their relatives.
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“It simply came to our notice then. On the one hand, they cannot find the bodies. On the other hand, many people have been forcibly taken to Belarus and then deported to Russia, ”he said.
Justice will not come overnight, says the chaplain, but it is important that “the crimes that have been committed here – the murders, the looting, the rapes – are investigated and the criminals prosecuted.”
In response to a number of questions about these and other cases, the Russian embassy in Australia said many of the war crimes allegations were unverified and fed on Ukrainian propaganda.
Nadiya Kuksenko cries as she talks about the pain they have suffered in Bucha. He says the hardest part is picking up prayer messages that residents write in church as he takes on the pain of every prayer. Credit: Kate Geraghty
“Without justification, lack of identifying data, or at least indication of sources, most of your questions do not deserve to be considered,” the embassy said.
“I spent a night under a corpse”
Trader Boris Popov, who was detained for weeks in a Russian prison with Natalia’s brother-in-law, Serhiy, has some of the answers.
Popov has provided the full account of what happened to Ukrainian prosecutors and the UN body investigating war crimes in Ukraine. He now wants to tell his story to the world, in part to try to secure the freedom of men like Yevhen and Serhiy still trapped in Russian prisons.
Willing to testify: Boris Popov has gone through an unimaginable ordeal. Credit: Kate Geraghty
On March 5, Boris was going to the center of Vorzel, about six kilometers from Bucha, to fetch water. His wife, also called Natalia, would not see him again for almost two months.
Four Russian camouflage soldiers came out of the forest and ordered him to undress and lie on the ground. They broke his nose, smashed his face with guns, then taped his eyes and tied his hands. The next morning he was thrown into a room with about 30 Ukrainian prisoners in the nearby village of Hostomel.
One by one, the men were taken to be interrogated and tortured. Sounds rang out. They put a gun to Boris’ head, asking him where the Ukrainian army was.
“I told them I didn’t really know and that I was a civilian. But at the last minute, they took out my gun and shot me in the ear. “
Boris Popov is in the clearing of the forest where he was captured by the Russians. Credit: Kate Geraghty
The soldiers told Boris they would release him; he could return home to Vorzel. In a cemetery on the outskirts of his village, soldiers let the prisoners untie themselves and cross a field.
When Boris started running, the grenades exploded and shots fired over him. The prisoners were surrounded by more than 50 Russian armored vehicles.
“I felt like they were chasing me like an animal just for fun,” Boris says.
Black bags were thrown over his head and the Ukrainians were taken to a shelter in the forest where they had been captured.
Then, he says, “the most terrible things” began to happen.
He saw a man tied to a tree trunk, who later learned that he was a lieutenant colonel of the Ukrainian intelligence agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Days before, he had taken an old grenade launcher from his house in Bucha and had tried to shoot at the Russian convoy, but …