Some women were raped near their sons… Bucha, the city of massacres: 3 months of reconstruction

While conducting an interview in a tent where children were playing, I heard a loud explosion nearby. When I was startled, a child silently pointed to a poster with a landmine on it. It was a bizarre situation, as the children had grown accustomed to the sound of landmine explosions.”

At the end of February this year, Russian troops invaded Bucha near Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, and occupied the town for a month. Photojournalist Shotaro Onodera entered the area in June of this year. For the next three months, he captured with his camera the town of Bucha and its people, who still bear the scars of the war.

In the city center, Mr. Onodera witnessed men burying unidentified bodies in a public cemetery. Since the names were unknown, the grave markers were marked with three-digit serial numbers. After several coffins (hitugi) were placed in the holes they dug, they were covered with soil using bulldozers.

The propaganda that there was no massacre at Bucha is still spreading all over the world. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be so many unidentified bodies buried in the streets. I heard the story of Yelena, whose mother-in-law was shot to death by Russian soldiers during the occupation. The Russian soldiers did not even allow Yelena to bury her mother-in-law’s body in the cemetery.”

A series of heartbreaking testimonies about the brutal behavior of the Russian soldiers were raised one after another in the area. Irina was living with her son when a Russian soldier, about the same age as her son, suddenly entered their house. When they fled to the basement, the Russian soldier demanded, “Come out, women only. When Irina came out, the Russian soldiers robbed her of the $1,000 she had hidden and then led her to an abandoned house next door and sexually assaulted her, telling her to “show them around.

After assaulting her, the Russian soldiers left as if they were fleeing. When Irina met her son again in the basement, he asked her if she was safe, but she could not answer that she had been raped by a Russian soldier about the same age as her son. She says she still has nightmares some days.”