Grisly work in woodland and cemeteries in push to officially record civilian deaths
n the woods on a roadside near Borodianka, 40 miles from Kyiv, police were overseeing the exhumation of two men who were executed and buried next to what locals say was a Russian military checkpoint.
The police forces of small towns and quiet villages have been plunged into investigating one of the largest atrocities inin recent times. Amid the unfathomable scale of this endeavour, officers are relying on ordinary Ukrainians to do the heavy lifting while they take statements and document the deaths.
, who was driving the van which carries the bodies. “But someone has to do it for the relatives, for the police.”Their employer, Mekhtransbud, wanted to do something to help when they saw the news about the mass atrocities in Kyiv region. They called one of the improvised humanitarian aid centres, who said they needed a van and manpower.
Roholsky had just picked up two bodies from a dug-up grave in the woods and placed them on a path with the help of two other male volunteers in their early twenties. “Every day it’s different but we find all sorts – men, women, young, old, middle-aged.” “I didn’t believe it was him when they told me,” said Kubitsky. He said that his neighbours found his father’s body in the woods near the Russian checkpoint on 17 March and buried him on the spot. The neighbours then returned to the grave yesterday to dig it up under police supervision.
After the two men in the woods , the next stop was the cemetery of a nearby village, where the team were to dig up two buried bodies in order to register the cause of death.Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
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