War diary from Bucha “The Chronicle of Three Windows”

Civilian casualties, burials, hunger, and shelling... Oleksiy Tarasevych endured all the horrors of the Bucha tragedy and now wants to tell millions of people about it. He turns his diaries and photographs of those events into a real collection of unique narrative evidence of crimes against humanity. He has already picked a title for his book – “The Chronicle of Three Windows”.

Until recently, I resided in… I lived in Kherson region, where I had been registered and where my house is. It is the house of my parents, which I, basically, took to look after. I spent a year in Kherson region; this is the Chonhar Peninsula, the village of Sivash. I came to Bucha to visit my parents, who are already... I am not a young man anymore and they are elderly people now.

It was some time before 3 March (my father’s birthday is on 5 March), so I wanted to stay with them a bit, while it was still possible. It was right when the events began. That is, it was on 24 February. On 24 February, I was already on the way, and on 25 February, I came here. The first thing I heard was an announcement that some electric trains were cancelled. Well, and the decision of the russian federation was also known from the media.

It was just clear that some political [developments] were unfolding and some political goals were being pursued. They were quite harsh but nobody could even assume then that this would be taking place right here. It was assumed that this would be in Luhansk and Donetsk regions, something like that.

Then the worst fear came on 27 February when a russian military column tried to break through Vokzalna Street. Well, that column was stopped. And the worst fear came from the fact that the ammunition in those military vehicles exploded. Indeed, it was very scary but not for long. That is, as soon as in the afternoon, basically, there was almost some street “partying” there, I would call it that way, around that shattered column. I mean, there were some young people, girls and men, who came to see that whole shamble. Tanks were still burning down and literally molten aluminium was still smoking... Still, there were civilians there. There were no police officers there, not any kind of cordons or something...

That is, everyone witnessed it all first-hand. Basically, people were collecting some trophies. There were a lot of weapons, there was a lot military ammunition of all sorts, as well as many documents. They could not be left on the streets. People just picked up and took away armful of it. Then I saw the first three dead bodies. They were of some Asian appearance. And basically, numerous phone calls followed, including my phone call reports, on hot lines “102” and “911”. However, there was no response, just nobody picked up the phone. That is why those so-called trophies, they were simply plundered. People took them to their homes. Well, basically, that’s where the intensity of the war, the intensity of some armed hostilities, halted.

On 1 March, a neighbour approached me and said that our guys from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, located near Giraffe shopping centre, just needed some help with digging trenches. About six men from our residential block went there, and some six to ten more people from Stekolka district [glass factory area] went there with spades. We had a commander whose name was Roman. He ensured a [safe] corridor for us. That is, it was all quite unsettling. It was impossible to just come to that checkpoint near Giraffe, but the commander was in touch with a commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and they let us through. We worked there and then returned home. We worked there for two days. I saw the first russian soldier from the window of my house. There were three of them walking by. It was on 3 March at around 10:30.

There were three waves [rotations]. Well, I distinguished three waves, roughly speaking. Basically, it was the first wave, as we call it. Civilians were worried about their own life support and began to leave on a large scale. My neighbours left their homes. In our house – a small three-storey house with two entrances – there were only six people left. There were two men among them, me and Vasyl, my neighbour from flat no. four. The rest were elderly people. A man, who was my father, born in 1941, and some old women, the eldest of whom was 92 years old. She had her birthday during the occupation. On 28 April, I think, but I don’t remember exactly. She was 92 years old. That is why we were concerned about making a supply of water, about distributing some food and...

Then we expected (well, I personally had such an inner hope) that the military would be fighting and civilians would be just living on. Logically, they had to go somewhere further, to their war field, to their trenches or some of their military camps. But the first wave happened and several days later, maybe a day or two, their presence was just pinpoint, fragmentary. That is, they were passing by, moving somewhere, leaving, but they were not staying here. They did not live here. They were followed by the second wave that moved more intensively. Well, I tried to keep some diaries and wrote down everything that... Diaries under the code-name “The Chronicle of Three Windows”. I had two windows overlooking the same direction and one more window from the front-door side overlooking the courtyard.

The second wave was more active, more intense, but in principle, it did not affect civilians. They were busy with their household chores. They cooked some food and got water from the well. Basically, speaking of some kind of repressions, I can’t say that they put pressure on us. We lived autonomously and they subsisted according to their own military tasks, which did not concern us. Finally, the third wave [happened], when the military of the russian federation simply settled in our house, in our houses. They placed their military equipment there.

I left the house and went outside at least once a day. I did not go to the basement and my mother and father did not go down to the basement either. The fact was that we still had a certain arsenal [stock of weapons and military items] at home and so my mother pretended to be a non-walking woman. She played a role of a bed-ridden old lady, and in order for this legend to remain complete, she never left her flat at all. When russian soldiers came into our flat, and they visited us twice, they didn’t ask my mother to get up. While we kept a certain “arsenal” and some documents inside our sofa. We then took some of that stuff to the checkpoint near Giraffe shopping centre and gave to the military of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. They were very happy to get the radios. There were the radios, some military papers, notebooks and maps. By the way, those maps were printed in 1986, if I am not mistaken.

They had the stamps “For official use only”, the reference number of a military unit and other reference information. These items were from that destroyed military column and we simply did not know what to do with all that stuff. We also collected some weapons from that destroyed column and when we were digging the trenches, we offered them those weapons, we offered to bring them those weapons. Because we did not need them. But the military said that they had enough of all this. “Hide it all for now and when time comes, you will hand it over to the Ukrainian authorities.” Well, how and where could we hide it? Inside the sofa. Basically, this is how we kept it, that whole “arsenal”. Prior to that, there were no any raids of our flats. Two waves passed. With the third wave, russian military vehicles were placed in the courtyard.

I am not really an expert but those were their tanks. They were near the kindergarten, and there were some armoured vehicles and trucks in the yard. There was some other military equipment too, the designation of which was incomprehensible for me. There were only 15 of those. They put their vehicles very tightly, very close to the house. They also fenced them placing overturned civilian cars around and building sort of barricades out of them. They were busy with that for quite a long time. At the same time, when they actually settled in the flats... They broke into absolutely every flat. The only flats they did not break into were those in which the doors could be unlocked and opened easily.

After examining a flat, including our flat, they put a mark “CHECKED” and an arrow, which meant they inspected a flat. Examined it. It was not a search, when everything is turned inside out, but still they opened the cabinets and illuminated with a flashlight from above and below. They asked some questions. We told them that we did not have any weapons. We explained that we were engaged in some scientific activities, our work was related to the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and that we were absolutely peaceful civilian people. Basically, these answers were accepted as satisfactory. At the same time, I heard something on the third floor. We have a three-storey building and I heard some hitting on the third floor. I saw a soldier carrying a big sledgehammer and a crowbar. That is, they broke the doors with a sledgehammer and a crowbar.

At first, I did not understand it. I thought maybe they were cold and wanted to warm themselves up that way. Well, and then it got quite clear – in order to vanish, so that those vehicles could not be noticed and identified as military equipment from the air. Then the soldiers demanded that everyone should put on armbands and those bands were of white colour, the same as the armbands the soldiers were wearing. White bands on the forearm and leg. Civilians were also required to wear those white armbands and, as I guess, it is my assumption that the russian soldiers wanted to blend in with local residents. If they wanted to single out, to mark the civilian population as a separate category, they would then use some other colour. But it was necessarily white colour. Moreover, they did not agree when people put on a white coat, for example. That is, the coat did not suit, or when people had white flags.

But later it got clear that this shooting was on civilians because the [Ukrainian] military had not been here for two months by then. So silence was really very frightening. I talked to my neighbours and friends and all of them tended to agree that silence was terrible. We kind of got used to explosions but when silence was absolutely stony – no dog barking, nothing, just completely blank silence, that was scary. In addition, any contact with russians caused fear...

So any such contact… you just knew that he could order you to undress or take you prisoner. We always felt very anxious but that was not fear probably. And probably even when they left, and they just left, they fled... At 05:30, a tank fired near the kindergarten and then they ran away. So when they ran away, we found the bodies of people close to us. I saw a neighbour with whom... I actually was present at the time when he was detained and taken away. I witnessed it. We thought he was in captivity but then we found the mutilated body and realized that he had been martyred.

However, that was not fear any more. Now it was some kind of permanent state of shock. It was already beyond the pain limit. I think they did it because of fear, as it is easier to kill a civilian before he picks up a weapon, any weapon. I think this could be the reason. Russian soldiers were in a state of permanent danger.

That is, they did not feel safe here. They understood that anything could happen at any moment. Well, they probably also vented their anger or blustered. They did not pass through the fortified line near Giraffe shopping centre. They got to Irpin but not by the road near Giraffe. I know those soldiers. When we were digging trenches, I interacted with them personally.

They were real warriors, like the three hundred Spartans, as they say. Those were not just some boys in military caps and armed with guns. They were warriors, very well equipped, full of determination and spirit. Russians were hit there regularly. They got it in the neck there all the time (and those were their attempts to get through Giraffe line head-on). They returned angry and perhaps they vented their anger by killing civilians. Or maybe they just did it knowing about their impunity.

I saw seven dead bodies of russian soldiers. I also saw about five or seven of our dead civilians, not counting those who were already buried. I personally took part in the temporary burial and then in the exhumation of two people – Vasyl Nedashkovskyi and Ihor Lytvynenko. I carried those guys out of the basement in my arms. I buried their bodies and then dug them out, but that was already beyond my pain limit. It just had to be done and so we did it. Several more men, besides me, who were staying under the occupation all this time and who are really heroes. Nobody talks about them now but we need to talk about them. They also fought their fight next to me, by burying and digging out the dead, by bringing food and water. Some scanty food, like unpeeled boiled potatoes, but an old woman could live another day then. Whenever possible, I kept a diary and documented what I could. I took some photographs and made some videos too. It was not always a video footage of some action. It could be some explosions or some big fire. In my diaries, I wrote down all the events that concerned me.

That is, if some vehicles passed by – I heard the sound of passing vehicles, looked out the window, noted the time, the direction, counted how many vehicles passed at what time, and where they moved. How many of them returned, whom I saw, and whom I heard. I wrote down all this. In my diaries, I also wrote about the temperature in our flat, for example, or the temperature outside, and how much food was left. Some news that we got from... We had a radio, some FM receiver, and basically, we tried to learn some information about where, who, which front, what was occupied or liberated, and what victims were reported and where.

The most important photograph is certainly the picture of Vasyl’s body, with all the injuries that he received. He died a martyr’s death indeed. They simply tortured him to death and then body examination showed that he was shot in the heart, I think. I knew Vasyl... He was from a flat next door. We spent a lot of time side by side, and he, together with his son, also took part in building those fortification lines near Giraffe shopping centre.

And the photograph of his mutilated body… I made it only to record that this was not just a person who died of a heart attack, or... So, in fact, it is a photographic evidence. This photograph is probably the most striking one emotionally. When Vasyl was already buried in the front garden, his friend, a young guy, was passing by. He learned about his death and I showed him the picture and said, “Look what they did to Vasyl.” I showed this photograph and the guy (he was 25-27 years old) just literally blacked out. Vasyl was buried before the windows of his own balcony, in the front garden.

At first, we thought that it would be a group grave where his body would be together with another body of an unknown person. Later it turned out that the second body was Ihor Lytvynenko. He was lying in such a position that it was impossible to identify him. We just could not see his face, nothing. And the military, the Ukrainian military, who were here on 1 April, forbade us to touch the body. They said it could be mined. On 5 April, police officers threw a hook from some distance, a grapple tied to a rope, in order to simply move Ihor’s body and find out if there was some explosive there or not. But the hook did not cling and I was already in a state beyond any pain limit or any sort of fear, or self-preservation instinct.

They pulled the body and then we picked it up. We buried him not near Vasyl but a little to the side, also in the front garden of our house. Why did we bury him? Just to protect his body from street animals. We committed him to earth just temporarily. Here are the documents. I made them realizing that they should not be found. But as my mother lied on the sofa with the arsenal inside it, I also kept my phone and these notebooks there. I understood that they should not be found. Yet, I could not but write it. Basically, I have kept diaries since my childhood. Well, I have some experience in that and I simply could not but do this. That is why I was writing things down. Later, many international news agencies got familiar with them [the diaries]. I did not hand them over to anyone. I only gave them to a police officer taking his promise to save them. He took both my phone and my diaries, and he kept his word. He then gave them back to me. Now I don’t just want to, I’m writing actively and I already have... Well, speaking about the diaries, firstly, I wrote in a concise manner and so a lot was left out and was not handwritten. Many notes were jotted down in a completely illegible handwriting because sometimes I made some notes just burning a match for lighting.

I held a burning match in one hand and made my notes with the other hand. Now I am working on converting that handwritten material into some kind of a readable text. In a Word file that will probably be provided with some illustrations and photographs, where possible. It will not be only the chronicle, like what military equipment or vehicles moved somewhere. These diaries have a lot of materials based on my personal psychophysical experiences. There is a message written to my children, when I realized that I might never see them again.

I did not know at all where they were at that moment. So I was having a dialogue with a piece of paper and now I want it to develop into a book. Many representatives of the media, both French and German media outlets… Now even from Lithuania. They said that these are unique materials and that they are waiting and will assist in having those translated into European languages... So that it is not just some kind of a publication on social networks but in order to make it a full-fledged book that could reach an audience of million readers. For now, I have 150 pages of typed text already but this is only one part of one of my diaries. So I need some time. It takes some time and effort. I am working on it every day.