Daily stories beyond horror

Life goes on in Ukraine amid the horror and devastation. Some places, such as Mariupol or Bucha, were destroyed by the Russian invasion. When Russian troops leave previously besieged cities in the north of the country, Ukrainians continue to do things before and now. They have to bury the dead, rebuild houses, eat, put on and wait.

So far, the UN has confirmed the deaths of at least 1,480 civilians during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though it acknowledges that there are many more. Bucha, on the outskirts of Kiev, was the last known scene of the massacre. While the Kremlin actively and passively denies such developments, eyewitnesses, international journalists, and prestigious organizations such as Human Rights Watch have all recorded them.

Devastating images interfere with the flashes of everyday life. A woman mourns her husband’s death while a group of people speak back. The woman’s body remains on the asphalt and the red nails still have traces of life. A grieving boy poses at a grave near his home. Underground, mother’s remains.

The red nail polish was distinguished by the ash tones of the asphalt. The bright color overwhelmed the chaos and reminded me of only a small trace of humanity that these painted nails belonged to a man who had recently had a manicure done. She chose this color, another shade for her ring. In the middle of the war a man stopped for a minute to do his nails.

“This is Irina before Russia came to our land. I was studying makeup and I had plans. He lived in Bucha. This is a photo of her hand made with a manicure that many of you have seen. The Russians killed Irina and hundreds of others like her. “Only because we are Ukrainians,” said journalist Katerina Sergatskova on Twitter.

The journalist points to a photo taken by Zohra Bensemra for Reuters, which shows the body of a woman who, according to Bucha residents, was killed by Russian soldiers and lay on the asphalt, minutes after Putin’s army left. Area, north of Kiev. We must remember that Russia said last week that its attacks in the second phase of the war would focus on the Donbass and not on the north of the country.

Irina was recognized by her makeup teacher, Anastasia Subacheva, who posted a letter on Instagram about her death. His last lesson with him was on February 23rd. “During the farewell, he hugged me and asked me to take care of myself,” Anastasia wrote on Instagram. Make-up artist portrays Irina as a vital woman who has discovered something she loved. He cites the example when he was provided with the cosmetic material of the course. “I was jumping for joy,” Subacheva recalls.

Another Ukrainian journalist, Hana Lyubakova, posted another photo on Twitter, in which Irina is seen with her daughter.

Irina’s own daughter confirmed her death on Instagram. “Returning home, where before, like everyone else, seemed to me the safest place … I was shot in the middle of the street,” he wrote. He also denounces that he has not yet been able to recover his mother’s body: “I still can not restore your body, because there are many of you there and they took you somewhere together.”

Also in Bucha another slightly older woman is crying in the street. Wearing a black knitted hat and a thick jacket. Her husband was killed. As if nothing had happened, behind him, the car remains overturned, maintains imperfect balance and threatens to fall. The woman is called Tania Nedashkivska and is 57 years old. In the background, on the sidewalk that maintains its layout, even though the asphalt that protects it is raised, a group of people continue to talk. In Bucha, as well as earlier in Mariupol or Chernigov, people mourn the dead and at the same time try to continue living.

A residential area on the outskirts of Kiev was destroyed by a Russian bombing. A total of six residential buildings collapsed. Among the ruins are a school and a kindergarten. One of the Russian missiles broke a water pipe, which was repaired a few days later. Photographer Maca Vojtech Darvik captured the moment when a woman picks up a few items left in the rubble of her apartment. Neighbors take firewood for heating because the maximum daily temperature, according to the author of the photo, does not exceed 12 degrees in these days of spring.

The first hasty burials were seen in the town of Mariupol. The port city has been under siege by Russia since the first days of March, and after the attack on its maternity ward, the outskirts of the city were inhabited by graves dug in the frozen ground. The same horrors are repeated from city to city.

In the backyard of his own house, Vlad Tanyuk, a six-year-old boy dressed in simulators and in a green jacket, stands at the grave of his mother, Ira Tanyuk. According to photographer Rodrigo Abdi, a woman died of starvation and stress during the war days on the outskirts of Kiev. The building brick delimits the mound of land marked with a wooden cross. The play area that could one day have been this yard is now a burial ground.

The hand that just released a few keys from which the EU flag hangs was another image that the Ukrainian government in this case shared on social media. “The Kiev region. The hell of the 21st century. The corpses of women and men who were handcuffed to death. The worst crimes of Nazism have returned to Europe. This was done deliberately by Russia. .

The dog is waiting for the body of a man moving on a bicycle. A corpse on the sidewalk that was coming or going to bring something from a neighbor’s house. A dead family in the yard of a low house that the rest of the neighbors are still watching in horror. Life and war go on.