In Boutcha, the experience of pain helps families who have lost their loved ones
She lost her husband in 2014 in the fighting once morest pro-Russian separatists in Donbass. Today, Mikhailina Skoryk-Chkarivska, city councilor of Boutcha, uses her experience of misfortune to support families seeking their loved ones in morgues in a region that has become a symbol of the horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“I feel the pain of these people,” Ms. Skoryk-Chkarivska told AFP in front of the Boutcha morgue, in full work. It was in this locality on the northwestern outskirts of kyiv that the bodies of 20 civilians were discovered in the middle of the street in early April, causing an international stir.
“For me, it’s very personal, I understand how important it is for families to be safe and to be able to bury” their loved ones, explains this woman whose husband perished eight years ago in the particularly bloody battle. of Ilovaisk, while a forklift brings black or white bags containing bodies to the morgue.
Ukrainian authorities have found more than 400 bodies in Bucha since the Russian army withdrew from the area at the end of March – killed by war but also dead from other causes. Overwhelmed, the city sought the help of morgues in neighboring towns, complicating the search for families without news of their loved ones.
“The problem is that the bodies are elsewhere, and the families are here,” says Ms. Skoryk-Chkarivska, explaining that some bodies were then brought back to Boutcha for identification.
– “Dead bodies no longer scare me” –
Nadia Kovalenko lost her 45-year-old daughter Inna to a strike on March 19 as she went to fetch water for her family.
As the fighting raged, relatives first gave him a temporary burial.
After the departure of the Russian troops, the authorities exhumed his body, to examine it and then be able to bury it definitively. But it took his mother a long time to find him.
“I had to come maybe four times in a row, and there was a queue” of people waiting, Ms. Kovalenko explained. “We waited and we found her. And yesterday we buried her.
Shaken by sobs, she hugged Mrs. Skoryk-Chkarivska. ” It’s finish. You did everything you might, ”the latter whispers to him.
But for other families, the search is not over.
“I came today, and I’ve been coming for two weeks already, to examine the bodies and find my husband,” said Tania Boïkiv, 52, equipped with a mask and gloves to search for her husband among the corpses.
She says Russian troops took and detained her husband in another village for two weeks, before beating him to death as they withdrew.
One of her only leads is a photo of a dead man taken by a priest, on which she thinks she recognized her husband.
“It is the most terrible thing in my life that my husband, the loved one, is gone. I don’t know of anything worse,” says Ms Boikiv. “Dead bodies don’t scare me anymore, compared to this tragedy. It would be a consolation to be able to bury him and visit his grave”.
