A woman's heartbreaking cry at the time of her son's exhumation, found in a mass grave near Kiev

On her knees on the ground, near a gas station destroyed by bombardment on the outskirts of Kiev, Lyudmila mourns her 23-year-old son, after discovering his body in a pit.

“Let me just see him for a moment,” the woman pleads while another tries to hold her. “My boy,” he murmurs.

Very close to the village of Buzova, in a hole dug in the earth, Evgeni's body, along with that of another man, appears deformed by water, covered with mud and hidden by a mattress the army.

But his mother recognized his shoes. “I'm not leaving here,” he repeats, clinging to the rubble around him.

Not far away, you can see the remains of two tanks torn apart by the fighting. On one of them, a blank “V” is painted, a symbol of the Russian forces that invaded Ukraine on February 24 and withdrew from the region for more than a week.

Macabre findings

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to end the offensive against the capital, the Ukrainian authorities have regained control of nearby towns, accusing the Russians of committing “massacres.”

The images of about twenty corpses in civilian clothes, some of them tied up, in Bucha, in the northwest of Kiev, went around the world. The Ukrainian authorities denounce a “war crime”. The Kremlin, for its part, claims that it is a “montage” organized by the Ukrainians.

In other towns near the capital, other scenes of abuse have been discovered. On Sunday, the country's justice claimed that 1,222 people had been found dead in the Kiev region since the beginning of the invasion, without specifying whether they were only civilians.

In Buzova, one of the representatives of the Lyudmila Zakabluk people claims that Evgeny, as well as the other man found next to him, were members of the territorial defense forces, a reserve unit of the Ukrainian army. They were missing since March 16.

“My heart is so heavy,” Liudmila laments. “What a horror! How is it possible to do this? ”

Although the cause of death of the two men is not established at the moment, blood was visible on the head of one of them.

The execution of prisoners of war is prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

Mourning

After cleaning the pit with a tanker truck, the police seal the place and a man gets inside the cavity.

With the help of a white rope, each body is extracted. That of Lyudmila's son is the lightest, but it takes nine men to get him out of the place.

In the surroundings, spring is beginning to break out. But the mother's cries of pain fill everything.

When Evgeni's body is completely removed from the hole, it is thrown into it. “Let me see it,” he implores. “I want to see it.”

This time, it takes four men to hold her.

(With information from AFP/by Joe Stenson)

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