Serhiy Matyuk has already dug the graves.

13 pits in a row, about two meters deep, two meters long, one meter wide, with earth piled into small mounds next to them.

Matjuk is the gravedigger of Bucha district.

Smoking, he leans against his silver SUV in the cemetery.

The midday sun burns the skin, the heat oppresses.

Actually, 13 people should have been buried that day.

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Matyuk doesn't know who they are, nobody knows.

They are 13 of more than 100 nameless dead in the Bucha morgue.

They all died in March when the place was occupied by Russian troops.

Now they are waiting to be identified.

So far, however, no mother, no wife, no brother has been found.

And time is running out.

Because the corpses can't lie in the freezer forever.

Bucha is one of the places that are symbolic of the cruel rampages of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Destroyed houses, raped women, murdered civilians in the streets.

It has been almost three months since the Russian army withdrew from Bucha and other suburbs of Kiev.

New atrocities are still being uncovered, mass graves found in parts of the forest where the Russians had their positions.

The Russians destroyed the hearse

Hundreds of people have been buried in the cemetery in recent weeks.

The new graves are easily recognizable by the freshly heaped earth.

Colorful plastic wreaths of flowers lean against dark wooden crosses, sometimes fresh flowers in cut plastic bottles filled with water stand in front of them.

On some graves there are photos of the deceased, they show young soldiers as well as older women.

In between, the blue and yellow flags of Ukraine are waving.

Gravedigger Matyuk stayed in Bucha during the occupation.

He and his boss Serhiy Kaplychny, the head of the city funeral service, recovered the first victims of the war just three days after the attack on February 24: three Ukrainian fighters and ten civilians.

Kaplychny also came to the cemetery that summer day.

He drives an ambulance, which he currently uses to transport the dead.

He no longer has a real hearse, the Russians destroyed it.

After the beginning of the war, Kaplychny and Matyuk were the only ones from the funeral service who were still in Bucha.

Her colleagues fled.

At first they didn't know what to do with the dead, says Kaplytschny.

There were no coroners to investigate what had happened.

However, simply burying the dead without a doctor's certificate and the consent of relatives was not possible either.

So they brought the bodies to the orphaned coroner's office.

When there were so many corpses that the two of them were overwhelmed, they sought help: a tattoo artist and another resident of Butscha voluntarily supported Matjuk and Kaplytschny.

When all the morgues in the region were full at some point in mid-March, they asked the occupiers to be allowed to bury the people – without documents.

They agreed.

But because the cemetery was one of the contested areas, the impromptu mass burials took place next to a church.

The two undertakers talk calmly about this time.

From time to time during the conversation Kaplytschny pulls out his lighter, pops the silver flap open and lights a cigarette with a click.

After the Russians left in early April, the dead were exhumed.

People buried their relatives not only in the ground next to the church, but also in gardens and backyards.

Sometimes they stayed in the cellars where others hid from the Russian soldiers for weeks.