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Twenty bodies, all men dressed in civilian clothes, some appearing to have been there for weeks, are photographed on April 2 by AFP, the first media to enter Boutcha, a suburb of kyiv, just after the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Twenty corpses scattered in the same street: the Yablounska street, in other words street of the apple trees.
The images will go around the world, sparking international excitement and marking a turning point in the Ukrainian conflict, then in its sixth week.
Quickly, kyiv accuses the Russian forces of having committed “war crimes” during their occupation of the city in March.
On Thursday, the first 10 Russian soldiers were indicted by the services of the General Prosecutor of Ukraine for “cruel treatment” and threats of murder on civilians in Boutcha. The prosecutor clarified that the investigation was continuing to determine their possible involvement in “premeditated murders”.
Yablounska Street, a pre-war residential street, seems to have become hell for the inhabitants of Boutcha in March. But what was going on there exactly? Who are these downed men? How and when did they die, who killed them? And, even more delicate question, why?
Russian authorities, who have accused the Ukrainians of “manipulation”, have denied responsibility for the deaths left in the wake of their occupation of the city.
AFP interviewed relatives of the victims for several days, those who picked up or tried to pick up the bodies, collected versions from police and judicial sources.
By cross-checking official lists of victims kept by the authorities and by consulting autopsy reports at the Boutcha morgue, AFP was able to identify these men and trace their journey to the “street of death”.
Here is the story of four of them.
Michka Romaniouk, the man with the bicycle
His body was found lying on his back, tangled in his bicycle, his face gray and already decomposed.
“We left together, I came back alone,” says Oleksandr Smagliouk, 21, his blue eyes fixed and empty when he begins to recount this morning of March 6.
At 10:30 a.m., Mykhaïlo known as “Michka” Romaniouk, 58, had decided to try everything: 4 km by bike to accompany Oleksandr, his niece’s boyfriend, to the military hospital in the neighboring town, Irpin.
The two men hoped to find there a loved one who had disappeared in a bombardment, and perhaps electricity to charge their phones and ask for help.
They pedal, Michka in front, Oleksandr behind, and arrive in Yablounska Street in a few minutes. They only have 500m left to go to the hospital.
“We were driving quite fast and there was no one in the street,” says Oleksandr. “I first heard the noise, a burst of shots. And Mykhaïlo fell in front of me. I fled by a small alley while pedaling”.
The shots, he claims, came from a two-story yellow house directly in front of them. “Snipers,” he said, referring to probable snipers.
“I didn’t realize what was going on there,” explains the young man, steeped in guilt.
Unbeknownst to the inhabitants, Yablounska Street, the main axis leading to the neighboring town of Irpin, making it possible to monitor everything that enters and leaves Boutcha, had become the outpost of Russian infantry and commando units which had just taken the city.
From March 4, barrages of tanks were posted there, Russian soldiers occupied the houses and set up a command post in one of them. The street is theirs.
What was the instruction? “The first thing they did was position themselves and shoot with everything they had and at anything that moved, anyone, anyone who approached,” said the police chief of Boucha, Vitaly Lobass.
The body of Michka Romaniouk remained 28 days on this piece of sidewalk painted in yellow and white, in front of the house from which the shootings would have left. His bruised face turned to the side in a pleading grimace, his hands in orange work gloves.
The corpse was collected on April 3 when the city was liberated, and autopsied five days later.
Cause of death: “ballistic head trauma, caused by penetrating bullet (…) multiple brain damage and fracture of the cranial box”, can we read on his death certificate, consulted by AFP.
Conclusion: “automatic weapon wound with intent to kill”.
The construction worker had been filmed, at the very beginning of the war, before the arrival of Russian troops in Boutcha, cooking on a stove for his entire little family.
“Day 5 of the war. Michka is on fire. Hello handsome!”, Viktoria Vatoura, 48, her sister-in-law, comments on the video, adding: “Sashka came back under shellfire, we have the meat, tonight is skewers.”
“A simple man who loved life and had never hurt anyone,” his sister-in-law told AFP. “He was a merry fellow, who liked to booze.”
Michka Romaniouk was buried on April 18 without ceremony and without a priest. Each of the four members of his family said a little word on his grave, in the cemetery n°2 of Boutcha.
Mykhailo Kovalenko, shot down hands up
The body of Mykhaïlo Kovalenko, he remained 29 days on the asphalt of Yablounska Street, lying on his side, in his blue parka and beige pants.
This 62-year-old father loved “classical music” and collected records and hi-fi equipment. He liked to walk in the undergrowth of Boutcha with his dog.
On March 5, while it was still possible, Mykhaïlo Kovalenko decided to evacuate Boutcha by car. His wife sits in the front, his daughter in the back.
Arriving in Yablounska Street, he gets out of the vehicle “hands up” to present himself to a barrage of Russian soldiers and show that he is unarmed, says his son-in-law, Artem, who prefers to keep his last name quiet.
The soldiers at the roadblock didn’t want to know anything. They shot him, told his daughter and his wife, who were able to run away.
Relatives of Mr. Kovalenko identified him by his clothes, in a photo taken from afar by AFP on April 2. “It was awful,” Artem says.
On April 18, Artem is called to the Boutcha morgue to confirm the identification of his stepfather. The daughter of Mr. Kovalenko, companion of Artem, could not come: she left for Bulgaria, where she is being treated for the psychological trauma suffered in Boutcha.
“She wakes up every night and cries,” Artem says.
Mykhaïlo Kovalenko was buried on April 18 in a black coffin, in the presence of his son-in-law and two other relatives, at the Boutcha cemetery, noted an AFP journalist.
Maxim Kireev, known as “Maxim without fear”
He wears a bright blue puffer jacket, his socks are pulled up over his black pants. Beside him, two other bodies of men, one of whom has his hands tied behind his back with a white cloth. All three are lying near cinder blocks that were to be used to renovate a nearby roundabout.
AFP photographed the passport found near the man in the down jacket: it is Maxim Kireev, born July 17, 1982.
The 39-year-old construction worker, who was not from the area, had managed to survive the first weeks of the war.
He hid from cellar to cellar, testifies Iryna Chevtchouk, 52, a refugee for several days in the same basement as him.
While the Russian soldiers terrorized the street, Maxim helped everyone, looking for business, attempting a supply.
“Everyone called him + Fearless Maxim +”, Iryna told AFP, 100m from the place of his death where, a month later, a puddle of blood is still encrusted on the ground.
On March 17, Maxim and another man decide to leave their hiding place to go get things from a nearby construction site, explains Iryna again.
He never returned, and she is still trying to figure out when and how he died.
“It’s very important to do justice to Maxim, because if nobody punishes them (the Russians), they will start again,” insists Iryna.
For police officer Lobass, Maxim and his two companions in misfortune “were tortured. The bodies of the three men were found with bullet wounds in the heart or neck”.
Volodymyr Brovtchenko, the man with the blue bicycle
Her body was found, flat across the sidewalk, her feet in the frame of a blue bicycle. His things are scattered around him.
Volodymyr Brovtchenko, 68, was shot dead as he rode his bicycle down Yablounska Street around March 5, according to his sister-in-law Natalia Zelena.
A neighbor who tried to pick up her body was also shot, but survived, Ms Zelena said.
“That day, he needed to bring the bike to Vorzel”, a village near Boutcha where he worked, explained this 63-year-old woman.
“He had borrowed the bike from someone and had taken it into his head to bring it back,” she added. Volodymyr’s wife tried to dissuade him from making yet another high-risk outing, but the father of two wanted to return the bicycle.
Of Russian origin, he had lived in Boutcha since 1976, she said.
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