By Jim
Geraghty
Tuesday,
August 29, 2023
Kyiv,
Ukraine —
Yesterday, I mentioned how much I dreaded going to Bucha, site of the infamous
massacre in the opening months of the war. You can imagine how I felt about
going there twice.
But the
previous day, the upstairs chapel of the Church of
Saint Andrew and All Saints was closed, and my traveling companion believed I needed to see
the photos displayed there, documenting the massacre, mass burial during the
occupation, subsequent exhumation of the bodies, and documentation of war
crimes.
Readers,
I will not include the photos of the dead bodies in this newsletter; you don’t
need to see that over your morning coffee. If you really want to get a sense of
the images, the photographs on display include, or are similar to, the photos
found here, here, and here. This photo shows how the holy and
the hellish stand right next to each other:
If you
don’t want to click through to those links, just imagine the worst photos
you’ve seen in old Life or Time magazines,
with some focusing upon little details like a woman’s nail polish on a dead
hand. Human torsos where there’s a messy lump at the end of the neck where the
head should be, and only a few teeth remaining to prove that it was once a
human head.
There’s
a big taboo in American media about showing dead bodies, and there’s an even
bigger taboo about showing dead bodies where you can see the faces. I
completely understand why that taboo exists, and I won’t break it by putting
photos like that in today’s newsletter. With that said, the fact that we want
to turn away, or can’t stand to look at it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And
I sometimes wonder if the point of the Russian barbarism and cruelty is to be
so horrible that plenty of good, sensible people feel the impulse to look away.
Because it is difficult to address what you cannot bring yourself to see.
We were
let into the display by Titiana, an elderly woman manning the shop selling
icons of saints on the floor below us. Titiana told us that during the Russian
occupation, her goddaughter had gone to find food for those who were hiding in
a basement. The Russians allowed her past a checkpoint, and she counted 24
corpses — some killed recently, some killed earlier — in the street in the span
of one kilometer, or a little more than a half a mile. She found food, but fearing
the other streets might have mines or other dangers, she had to walk back the
same path, past the same 24 dead bodies. She said that in some cases, the faces
had been eaten by dogs.
Titiana’s
son is in the Ukrainian army. She said that he texts her as often as he can,
and that she heard from him yesterday. But that was the first time she had
heard from him in four days, as he had been on a mission.
Titiana
insisted I speak to Yevhen Olexienko, who is nicknamed “Columbo.” Olexienko
said he got the nickname from Bucha’s mayor years ago; I didn’t get a clear
sense whether it was because of a resemblance to Peter Falk or because of a
habit of asking questions. Before the war, Columbo ran a private security firm
with 160 employees. Now, his company is down to 16, with many of the former
employees serving in the Ukrainian army, and Columbo serving as a volunteer:
The
shoulders of Columbo’s T-shirt had the tryzub, the trident-style Ukrainian
national emblem, aligned with an X-Wing fighter from Star Wars. It
is not surprising that many Ukrainians feel like a beleaguered, outgunned rebel
alliance facing down an evil empire.
The
pictures on Columbo’s cell phone could keep a United Nations war-crime
investigator busy for a year, and he was kind enough to show and then forward a
wide variety of them to me. For every Ukrainian in these contested suburbs of
Kyiv, it was dangerous just to be on the street. Columbo said he heard stories
of locals who asked the Russian soldiers why they were here, and the Russian
soldiers responded by shooting them. There was no “safe part of town.” At one
point, there were 400 Russian military vehicles in Bucha, a suburb that is
roughly ten square miles.
Columbo
showed me a picture of a man who had been shot in the head, effectively
decapitated by a high-caliber bullet. He said this man was the brother of his
neighbor, and that he had left the house on the first day of the occupation to
find water for others. Columbo and his neighbor looked for him for 35 days.
Between the grievous head wound and the decomposition of the body, the
neighbor’s brother was identified by the keys to his apartment and the fact
that his body was near his motorcycle.
He
showed me a picture of a bus, clearly marked as a Red Cross vehicle, that had
been strafed with gunfire. We zoomed in and counted more than 20 bullet
holes:
He
showed me a picture of a small, burned-out apartment building; a tank had shot
into it, starting a fire. One family had been inside; their deaths were only
confirmed when the burned bones were discovered a month and a half later.
Two men
apparently had tried to speed past a Russian military checkpoint and been
gunned down, right in front of one of Bucha’s schools. After the occupation,
Columbo had to help remove the bodies:
I should
point out that Columbo was neither enraged nor overcome with grief as he shared
his own phone photo gallery from hell with me. He told his stories in a tone
that was sober and somber but matter of fact. He seemed to appreciate my
listening, and I think he appreciated the idea that all of you would be hearing
about what happened, that it wouldn’t be forgotten. Occasionally he expressed a
bit of Ukrainian pride, pointing out that one building had been hit by two
rockets from a MiG fighter plane, but it was still standing. (Let’s hear it for
the engineers from the greater Kyiv area.)
Columbo
showed me how the Russians had set up a firing position inside a kindergarten,
and when they retreated, they left a row of “mine tails” — parts of a mine — in
a row. The mine tails are not dangerous by themselves, but the Russians left
plenty of active, dangerous mines all around the suburb’s streets. Columbo, a
Ukrainian, served in the then-Soviet army as a young man, and he said he
defused several mines himself.
From his
days serving in the Soviet army in Ukraine in his youth, Columbo said he knew
how Russian soldiers thought and acted. Also, he still had his old Soviet
military ID. During the occupation, he showed it to the Russian soldiers at
check points, and he said that sometimes “they greeted me like a brother.” That
was useful for getting past the check points, but Columbo didn’t enjoy having
to pretend to be friendly with the men destroying his community. Other times,
the invading Russians were more skeptical of him when he wanted to get past a
check point and made him strip down to his underwear to show that he wasn’t
carrying any weapons. The weather was just a bit below freezing.
The
Russians apparently tested their weapons on parked cars of civilians; at one
point, it turned into a game to see how many cars a high-caliber round could
penetrate:
When the
Russians saw a nice luxury car, they stole it. On other cars, they left
graffiti — “Russia, I love you” “Ukranians are Nazis and f****s.”
The
slaughter of civilians is indisputably the worst act of the invading Russians.
But there is something so distinctively petty about the Russians’ graffiti,
looting, and gleeful destruction of other people’s property. Comparing the
Russian brutes to teenagers is an insult to teenagers. They were like the worst
of schoolyard bullies handed guns, enabled to run roughshod over anyone who
crossed their path.
Columbo
told me how every day, the Russian forces shelled and launched rockets in the
direction of Kyiv — usually five series of attacks per day, often ten to 15
shots, but it varied a great deal from day to day. In addition to the mines,
unexploded ordinance was left all over the suburb.
Some in
Bucha did try to fight back, creating sniper’s nests on the top floor of tall
buildings. The Russians responded by firing tank rounds into the top floors of
any tall building.
Those
who stayed lived without running water, electricity, or natural gas. Columbo
showed me pictures of him cooking over a campfire in his yard; he said he lost
about 45 pounds over the course of the occupation:
Columbo’s
cellphone photo gallery was about as horrible as it gets, but then he suddenly
showed me . . . a selfie with billionaire Richard Branson. Branson visited
Bucha in April, and Columbo described Branson playing chess with a young local
man with cerebral palsy who survived the attack with his mother. He said he was
impressed that Branson did not come with a large entourage, just one driver and
one bodyguard:
You can
read Branson’s account of his visit to Ukraine here, including his visit to Bucha and
the chess match. Columbo asked me to pass along his thanks and appreciation to
Richard Branson. So, Richard, we haven’t had a chance to talk lately, but
Columbo sends his best.
After an
emotionally exhausting day, my traveling companion and I met with Maryan
Zablotskiy, a
member of Ukraine’s parliament, and a man brimming with quiet, grim
determination and an occasional flicker of confidence. When Zablotskiy smiles,
you get the feeling he knows a lot of secrets.
(By the
way, check out the ages of those elected
to Ukraine’s parliament in 2019 — a whole lot of members in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. Considering
the geriatric state of the top level of America’s governing class, I can’t help
but feel a little envy at having so many Generation X and younger elected
officials helping steer the Ukrainian ship of state through the heaviest of
storms.)
I would
summarize Zablotskiy’s worldview as a burning desire to screw over Vladimir
Putin and the Russian government and its allies anywhere, any time, any way he
could. We talked about how Russia is not merely a brutal band of thugs, a sower
of division, and an enabler of tin-pot autocrats. The Russian government, the
Wagner group, and like-minded associates stir up trouble all over the globe.
It’s not just in Ukraine; it’s in Georgia, Moldova, Syria, all over central
Asia, the Central African Republic and Sudan, the recent coup in
Niger. And of
course, Russia is also eager to solidify its relationship with China and Iran,
and North Korean
leader Kim Jong-un recently vowed to “hold hands” with Putin and bolster strategic
cooperation, according to North Korean state media.
It is
not quite true that every one of America’s enemies works together. But they all
share interests and often find ways to cooperate when it suits those interests.
Zablotskiy calls this the “Axis of A******s.”
When you
see trouble in some far-off corner of the world, you can often find a trail
leading back to Wagner, or Russia’s far-reaching and extensive propaganda
operations, or the spy agency FSB, or the military-intelligence operation GRU,
or some other unsavory allies aligned with Putin’s empire of leverage and
influence.
You
might even say Russia is our preeminent
geopolitical foe,
or taking the silver medal. The 1980s did indeed call,
asking for their foreign policy back, because we really needed it deployed back in
2012, and we need it again now. Alas, President Obama let that call from the
1980s go to voicemail.
The West
and Russia are currently in a proxy war and an economic battle. If the invasion
of Ukraine worsens from its current status as a debacle that has cost the
Russians far more blood and treasure than they ever expected to a disastrous
defeat, then the resources available for Russia to make trouble around the
world will drop dramatically.
Zablotskiy
was particularly pleased about the “Bolivar Battalion,” a volunteer battalion made up of
Venezuelans, now fighting in Ukraine against the Russians. By the way, if
you’re Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, how do you feel about a group of
your countrymen who hate your guts and want, more than anything else in the
world, to see you toppled, going over to Ukraine and getting training and
experience in insurgency tactics, learning how to take on a larger military
force? This war is going to have far-reaching consequences around the world for
many years to come.
Zablotskiy
was also pleased about a recent
arrangement with the Miami Police department to send its confiscated firearms
to Ukraine. (Why is
it not so surprising that a city with a heavy Cuban-American population would
see the value in helping another country stand up to a brutal tyrant?)
Oh, and
there’s a particular businessman in the Middle East who has been very
pro-Ukraine in his social-media feed, but who has been secretly working with
the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to help the Russians obtain drone parts.
The Ukrainians know what this businessman is up to, and man . . . I would not
want to be that guy.
ADDENDUM: A Washington Post profile of
Zablotskiy in December described the Ukrainian lawmaker’s proposal to erect a
seven-foot-tall bronze statue of Ronald Reagan bursting through the Berlin Wall
in one of Kyiv’s main squares.
Zablotskiy told me with a smile, “Don’t worry, we have an even better location. One that will drive the Russians crazy.”
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