One day before leaving a Ukrainian village, Russian soldiers murdered all the men: now they exhumed them to prove a war crime

On a quiet street lined with walnut trees there was a cemetery with four bodies yet to be buried.

They were all victims of Russian soldiers in this village on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Their temporary coffins were together in a tomb. Volunteers unearthed them one by one on Sunday, two weeks after the soldiers disappeared.

This spring is a gloomy season of planting and replanting in cities and towns around Kiev. The bodies handed over to hasty graves in the midst of the Russian occupation are now being recovered for investigations into possible war crimes. So far more than 900 civilian casualties have been found.

The four bodies correspond to victims who were killed on the same street on the same day, according to a local person who provided coffins for the bodies. He bowed and kissed the wrought iron crosses of the cemetery as he walked to the makeshift tomb.

The volunteers tried to dig with shovels, then they gave up and called a bulldozer. While they waited, they recounted their work secretly burying the bodies during the month-long Russian occupation, and then recovering them. One young man recalled being discovered by soldiers who pointed guns at him and said “Don't look up” while he was digging a grave.

The bulldozer arrived, rumbling beyond the wooden dependence of the cemetery. Soon there was the smell of fresh earth and the murmur: “There they are.”

A woman appeared, crying. Ira Slepchenko was the wife of a man buried here. No one told him he was being dug up now. Another victim's wife arrived. Valya Naumenko looked into the tomb and then hugged Ira. “Don't collapse,” he said. “I need you to be okay.”

The two couples lived next to each other. The last day before the Russians left the village, the soldiers called a house. Valya's husband, Pavlo Ivanyuk, opened the door. The soldiers took him to the garage and shot him in the head, apparently without any explanation.

Then the soldiers shouted, “Is there anyone else here?”

Ira's husband, Sasha Nedolezhko, heard the shot. But he thought the soldiers would search the houses if no one answered. He opened the door and the soldiers also shot him.

The men's coffins were lifted with the others, then opened. The four bodies, wrapped in blankets, were placed in body bags. The white lace-edged lining of each coffin was dyed red where the head had been.

Ira watched from afar, smoking, but stood by the empty coffins as the others left. “This whole land is stained with blood, and it will take years to recover,” he said.

She knew her husband was here. Nine days after his temporary burial, he arrived at the cemetery dotted with picnic tables, following the local custom of spending time with the dead. She brought coffee and cookies.

“I want this war to end as soon as possible,” he said.

The other bodies were a teacher and a local man who lived alone. Nobody came for them on Sunday.

In the house next to the cemetery, Valya Voronets, 66, cooked homegrown potatoes in a room heated by firewood, still without water, electricity or gas. A small radio sounded, but not for long because the news becomes too depressing. A plate of freshly cut radishes rested near the window.

A Russian soldier once came running and pointed his gun at her husband after seeing him climb onto the roof to get a cell phone signal. “Are you going to kill an old man?” Myhailo Scherbakov, 65, responded.

Not all Russians were like that. Voronets said he cried along with another soldier, barely 21 years old. “You're too young,” he said. Another soldier told him they didn't want to fight.

Still, I was afraid of them all. But she offered them milk from her only cow.

“I felt sorry for them in these conditions,” he said. “And if you're nice to them, maybe they won't kill you.”

(with information from AP)

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