How a town is reborn through pain and honors the dead. Report from Bucha

- A very interesting man. And a very atypical biography for a volunteer. What motivated him to join the army?

- He survived the occupation in Worzel.

- That makes sense. Those who were under occupation perceive everything differently.

We came to Buchanskiy city council to find out whether it was possible to name a street in the subordinate town Vorzel in honour of our friend - Evgeniy Osievskiy. Zhenya was a post-graduate student at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, writing a thesis on the inhabitants of the Pacific island of Tanna, reviewing comic books and investigating the activities of religious sects. He lived in a student dormitory in Vorzel, where he was caught up in the Russian invasion. Zhenya wrote a report about this experience, and a few months later he volunteered to go to the front, although as a postgraduate student he was entitled to a deferment.

He received the call sign "Vegan" because he did not eat meat. He underwent military training abroad because he knew English well. He refused to become an officer because he was against hierarchy.

Zhenya died in the battle near Bakhmut on 22 May.

We told all this to a representative of the city council, who carefully wrote down the data in a plaque, copied a link to a biography from Wikipedia and googled Zhenya's report.

Our residents who managed to leave and now returned want to get on with their lives. And not to remember everything that happened here. But for us, on the contrary - it's important to keep the memory alive," he says.

The man was captured by the Russians during the occupation, but managed to escape.

I was in front of the city council, Russian soldiers came up to me and started to detain me. And I was just laughing, I couldn't believe that soldiers of another state could detain me in my country," says the representative of the city council.

According to him, he and several other men he knew ended up in the basement of a multi-storey building. The Russian soldiers were waiting for their commander, who was supposed to say what to do with the prisoners. But he did not come. And then the guards disappeared somewhere, so the men decided to escape through another entrance. Their data was not copied, so no one searched for them afterwards.

People ask us how we managed to be so brave. And we just didn't realise the risks, the scale," says the man.

Reports of shot-up cars and dead civilians began to appear gradually. Our interlocutor says it was still hard to believe. But in mid-March, he received a phone call from the wife of a close friend saying that he had been shot by a sniper.

He had just gone out to his balcony in the evening to get some twists for dinner," the man said.

According to a representative of the city council, the mayor's office is currently creating a website filled with stories from residents of Bucha, Irpen, Vorzel, Gostomel and surrounding villages.

These are well-known cases, such as the shooting of the Chikmarev family, where only the father survived. Or the 14-year-old boy Yura, who was shot through the hood and miraculously was not hit in the head. His father was killed in the process.

And many other, less publicised tragedies. For example, after the de-occupation, a 26-year-old girl was found murdered, and it was known that she was on her way to the evacuation.

She was very pretty. We are almost certain that the Russians pulled her out of the car at the checkpoint. Just because they liked her. There was a similar situation when a young girl was also tried to be taken out of the car, but her mother ran out and begged them to take her instead of her daughter. So they were released," said a representative of the city council.

In total, about 500 people were killed in Bucha, including 12 children, the youngest of whom was 7 months old. According to the man, about a hundred more people died because of the collateral consequences, primarily the lack of medical care.

Volunteers tried to deliver medicines. But they were prevented from doing so. Once they tried to take them to the Hero of Ukraine, who lived further away from the city (most likely we are talking about 77-year-old former test pilot Oleksandr Galunenko- ed.). We explained this at the roadblock, but the Russians did not let him in, - says the representative of the city council, specifying that the man still survived.

Returning to our question - immortalisation of Zhenya's memory, he noted that the mayor's office will certainly assist. It is already possible to make a memorial plaque on the dormitory. But the renaming of the street is harder - it happens only in exceptional cases.

But the fact that Bucha remembers the victims is felt everywhere. In the city centre, the Alley of Fighters for Independence, where photos of fallen soldiers of Buchanskiy district are placed on special cubes.

Among them is AFU Colonel Mikhail Matyushenko, who commanded the pilots from the "Ghost of Kiev".

Then Matyushenko, who had the call sign "Ded", participated in the liberation of Zmeiny Island. During this mission over the Black Sea, he was killed. One of the locals said that "Ded" was a respected and wealthy man of retirement age, so he had the right not to serve. But he could not be away.

His grave is located at the Buchanskoye cemetery in an alley among other fallen military men.

During the battles for the city, shell fragments hit this cemetery, piercing the iron crosses and damaging the monuments. It is still visible today.

And closer to the woods, where the cemetery gradually expands into, it's downright creepy - there are still unidentified residents buried under numbers.

As of spring 2023, there were 80 of them.

On the other side of the city, at the entrance to the local large and well-maintained park, a memorial was placed where the name of each of the Buchans civilians who died during the Russian invasion is inscribed.

But some of the plaques are blank - they will be filled in once those 80 names are known.

However, the city is not frozen in its grief. Construction continues on the site of the hypermarket that was wiped off the face of the earth, and children play in the yards of small, cosy houses, where there are almost no traces of shelling.

But just next door is a modular town for those who have lost their homes. The elderly man who lives in it sits by the walls, as if he doesn't notice anything around him. His whole world seems to be limited to a few dozen metres around the perimeter of the fence.

Through this fence you can see the bazaar, part of which is working, and the other is still a burnt out area.

Here was the music shop where I bought my first guitar," a young boy points to the burnt structures.

The scars in Bucha remain everywhere, everyone drowns out this pain in their own way. Someone brings life back to the city, someone froze and still experiences grief, someone carefully collects the memory of the dead, and someone takes up arms. This is the path Zhenya has chosen.

You can read more about Eugene Osijewski in an article by his close friend on the website of Spilne magazine.