By Correspondent in Bucha, Ukraine
No matter where a country is, whether Europe or Africa, if you engage in criminality, you have to be punished, says Fr Andrii Golovin of the St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church in Bucha.
Bucha, located just 25 kilometers North of Ukrainian capital Kyiv, is today synonymous with alleged war crimes perpetrated by Russia since its invasion early 2022.
The district is currently undergoing reconstruction as efforts to clean it up following the attacks commenced soon after the area was liberated from Russian invasion.
St Andrew’s Church plays host to a mass grave of over a hundred civilians killed by the Russian soldiers.
Their bodies lay on streets for days after the invasion as the soldiers blocked relatives from burying them in cemeteries.
About 118 bodies were buried in a mass grave at St Andrews Church, as Fr Andrii reveals that Russian soldiers tortured and killed people and one of the places of torture was a children’s camp in Bucha.
“We all have relatives and friends who were killed by Russian soldiers.
We had situations where bodies were so destroyed so we had to do DNA tests to determine who they were,” Fr Andrii told a team of African media representatives and press freedom advocates on a tour of selected Ukrainian sites affected by war.
“That’s not the whole number of people killed in Bucha. People were killed on streets. And Russians didn’t allow opportunity to bury in cemeteries so we buried in parks, backyards and church grounds.
Nearly 80% of those killed were civilians killed on purpose. It was an execution. We hope those crimes can be punished. All crimes should be punished and we don’t want what happened here to be repeated anywhere. No matter where a country is, whether Europe or Africa, if you engage in criminality, you have to be punished.”
He said what Ukrainians want is justice for the crimes against humanity.
“We’re demanding punishment against those who perpetrated the crimes not because we’re angry but because that’s the right thing to do to those who engage in criminality.
For us, it’s also important that Russian a soldiers who perpetrated these crimes are punished,” Fr Andrii said.
“If the evil is not stopped, it’ll continue to spread all over the world.”
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office recently revealed in a tweet that the Russian army committed more than 9,000 war crimes in the Bucha district of Kyiv region, and more than 1,700 civilians were killed, including about 700 in Bucha.
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe last July concluded that atrocities by Russian troops in Bucha amounted to crimes against humanity and hinted that they were in possession of credible evidence of violations of even the most fundamental human rights.
At St Andrew’s Church, in one of the halls, Fr Andrii showed the team an exhibition of graphic pictures of victims of the atrocities, photographed a few days after the invasion.
This is in the hope of keeping alive the events of over a year ago as the district recovers from the attacks.
- Mast