In the last aisle of the Boutcha cemetery, 11 freshly dug graves accommodate eleven unknown persons who died during the Russian occupation.
Located near kyiv, the Ukrainian city suffered atrocities committed last March.
Unclaimed bodies are buried by local authorities.
Almost all of these nine men and two women had been buried by residents in mass graves when the brutality of the fighting made it impossible to do otherwise.
Another body was found later, after Russian troops withdrew from the area.
About fifty unidentified people
More than four months after the discovery by AFP journalists on April 2 of 20 dead civilian bodies, the first indications of the atrocities committed during the occupation of this northwestern suburb of kyiv, local authorities have started the burial of the dead that no one has claimed.
On Tuesday, the first fourteen bodies were buried, followed by eleven more on Thursday.
This is only the beginning: three additional ceremonies are planned, confides to AFP Mykhaïlyna Skoryk-Chkarivska, an assistant to the mayor of Boutcha who specifies that around fifty people - out of the 458 civilians who died during the occupation of the city- have not been identified.
“We will continue to work (…) Our goal is to find relatives of each unidentified person,” she adds.
DNA sampling and calls on Facebook
For this everything is done.
DNA samples have been taken, including by French gendarmes who came in April to assist their Ukrainian colleagues, and anything that can help with identification is posted on Facebook.
But the procedures are formal.
Among the eleven buried Thursday, two men had identity papers on them.
Despite appeals on the Internet, no one has come forward and "for them to be formally identified, their relatives must see the bodies and recognize them", continues Mykhaïlyna Skoryk-Chkarivska.
The deputy mayor is only half surprised.
Life may seem to have returned to normal in this rather upscale suburb, which attracts Kyiv residents in search of greenery, "half of Boutcha's population has still not returned".
“It is important that these people be buried with dignity”
A few minutes before the arrival of the bodies, stored in a hurry in the trailer of a refrigerated truck, employees of surrounding municipal cemeteries who came as reinforcements had planted eleven Orthodox crosses.
On each, is hung a small sign accompanied by a number: it will make it possible to find the body, if the DNA tests came to speak or that a family appeared.
The coffins are difficult to close.
Andriï Golovin, the priest of the church near which had been dug one of the main mass graves of Boutcha, can finally pronounce the last prayer.
"It's important for us that these people be buried with dignity, like humans and not just like dead bodies," the priest told AFP in a stern voice. hard to denounce the "+ Russian world + which has revealed itself to us in all its horror".
An unknown twelfth
A twelfth coffin should have been buried in the alley of unknowns in the Boutcha cemetery.
The one containing the body of Oleksandre Khmarouk, a 37-year-old former soldier who has been missing since mid-March.
His parents, who had left the occupied city shortly before, had been looking for him in vain ever since.
All they knew was that he had been arrested by Russians.
That they knew where to go: in his building, the doors of the three apartments occupied by Ukrainian soldiers or ex-soldiers had been smashed.
But their son was nowhere to be found.
The DNA sample results weren't coming in.
A photo, broadcast on a Viber messaging loop, allowed them to identify him at the last minute.
“The orcs (nickname given to Russian soldiers, editor's note) arrested him at his home.
They killed him near the market”, repeats in a broken voice the father of Oleksandr Khmarouk, Vassyl, collapsed on a bench while he clutches a framed portrait of his son against him.
Oleksandre Khmarouk will be buried in a separate square, between dozens of other graves whose date of death indicates March 2022. His parents will embark on another quest.
“An informant gave her name.
There was a woman who accompanied the Russians, the neighbors heard her.
But we don't know who it is, or where it comes from,” they repeat.
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