The Russian soldiers were pointing at Yevhen Kulakivskiy’s wife Natalia when he started talking.
Natalia Kulakivska with her missing loved ones. From top right: nephew Vladyslav Bondarenko; brother-in-law Serhiy Lyubych and husband Yevhen Kulakivskiy, Bondarenko is now confirmed dead.Enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity. Many of the practices associated with making someone disappear – torture, depriving them of a fair trial and inhumane treatment – are also war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.
“It is a form of torture or ill-treatment of the families as well, by keeping them in the dark,” she says. “And that’s one of the key elements of enforced disappearance – the family becomes the victim as well.” Then on April 20, weeks after the Russians had fled Bucha, a man turned up in her street who had been released by Russia as part of a prisoner exchange.
Father Andriy Halavin stands at the rear of the church, in front of the memorial and plaque at the site of the mass grave of civilians killed by Russian soldiers.Andriy Halavin, the priest at the Church of the Holy St Andrew the First-Called, says many residents still don’t know what happened to their relatives.“It’s twofold. On the one hand, they can’t find the bodies. On the other hand, a lot of people have been forcefully taken to Belarus and then deported to Russia,” he says.
Popov has provided the full account of what happened to Ukrainian prosecutors and the UN body investigating war crimes in Ukraine. Now he wants to tell his story to the world, partly in a bid to secure the freedom of men such as Yevhen and Serhiy still stuck in Russian prisons.On March 5 Boris was on his way to Vorzel’s town centre, about six kilometres from Bucha, to fetch water. His wife, also called Natalia, would not see him again for almost two months.
The soldiers told Boris they would release him; he could go back to his home in Vorzel. At a cemetery on the outskirts of his town, the soldiers let the prisoners untie themselves and walk across a field. “While they were beating me I didn’t care about the weather in the heat of the moment, but as the night was closing in I started to freeze,” Boris says.
Forget the politics for a moment. This is just sad.
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