I met Sergii, a young man in his 20s, in Bucha, the site of a massacre of civilians.
He lost his father at the end of March of last year, just before Russia pulled out of Bucha.
After his mother and sister left Piran, only Sergii and his father remained. While he went to the next village to get groceries, his father was shot dead by Russian soldiers.
The following is the transcript of Sergiy's interview.
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# My father's last phone call on March 28th
It was around 9 am on the 28th of March.
Five or six Russian soldiers broke into the house where my father was staying with four neighbors.
Russian soldiers took everyone's cell phones there, including my father's phone.
In the meantime, my father borrowed another neighbor's cell phone and called me.
We promised to call each other at 10am every day to make sure we were safe when we couldn't be together.
That day, around 10 am, I got a call from an unknown number, and it was my father.
Around that time, whenever my father called, his mood would change depending on the shelling or the surrounding situation, but that day his voice was very calm.
He said the Russians came and took people's phones, and when I asked if I was okay or if I was hurt, everything was fine.
My father said the Russians are taking people's cell phones and looking for photos or videos of Russian soldiers' movements.
Throughout this story, my father was in a very calm voice, not nervous, and I believed that nothing was going to happen because I didn't have any photos or videos that could cause trouble for him.
After making sure we were safe with each other, we hung up and said we would call again tomorrow.
That was my last phone call with my father.
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# My father's body was secretly moved by the neighbors in the middle of the night
That night I received a Telegram message from a neighbor telling me that my father had passed away.
About 30 minutes after talking to me, Russian soldiers returned and took my father and neighbors out of the house.
Except for one person who was unable to move due to illness, all four people, including the father, were dragged out into the streets.
There, my father explained to the Russians that his cell phone had nothing they were looking for.
However, the Russians fired several shots at the ground menacingly, and my father was forced to turn a corner and follow the Russians.
And the next minute, neighbors heard one gunshot, and moments later, three more.
Neighbors knew my father was dead.
When the Russians returned, the neighbors asked them if they could take his father's body.
The Russians then said that whoever took the body would lie down next to it.
In the end, the three neighbors who were together returned home empty-handed only after hearing the Russian soldier say, "You can go now." That night, they secretly went out again and moved the body of their father, who had been left on the street, and buried it in the yard of the apartment complex. .
# 4 bullets stuck in father's body
It was three weeks after I returned home and identified my father's body.
In the meantime, the authorities moved the father's body, which had been buried in the yard, to the morgue, where they first identified it.
(**Ukraine recaptured the Bucha
region on April 3, and launched a full-scale investigation into suspicions of war crimes, including the massacre of civilians by the Russian army)
was found to have been shot once.
It was only then that I knew what the four gunshots my neighbors had heard.
In fact, it was three weeks after my father's death, so it was difficult to recognize his face.
It was so different from what he looked like when he was alive.
I just looked at the body and confirmed that it was my father's body.
It was in June, three months after my father died, that my mother, who had left refuge, returned and cremated the body together and prepared a grave in the village cemetery.
# The process of accepting father's death
For the first month or two, it was very difficult to accept my father's death.
I couldn't control the sudden burst of sadness, and I was quite emotionally unstable.
It's still mentally tough, but now I've calmed down a lot, and I'm trying to become stronger every day.
But I still miss my father.
Especially when you see things that are familiar to him and that he likes.
My father was very fond of fishing in his lifetime, and whenever he passed a store he used to frequent or saw something he used often, he would call him and say, "I found something you'll like very much" or "I think this will be useful to you." Sometimes the thought of saying the same thing pops into my head.
Sometimes I think of my last phone call with my father, and I think I would have said something different if I had known it was the last time.
But looking back, I don't think I've ever been given the time to say those things.
These are my thoughts now.
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# I still don't know the reason for the 'killing by firing squad'
Sergii's father was an ordinary engineer working for a railway company.
He was a 43-year-old ordinary father who worked hard to support his family by cutting down trees and selling them for firewood in the winter.
He still doesn't know why his father was suddenly captured and shot by the Russians.
Until the moment of his death, he thinks that his father also did not know why he was dying.
Russia still maintains that the alleged massacre of civilians in Bucha was a "Ukrainian act", but evidence and testimonies abound.
Ukrainian authorities announced the results of an investigation in August of last year that a total of 458 civilians were killed in Bucha by gunshot wounds, arson and torture. There is also an analysis called.
What is clear is that many civilians have been killed here by murderous violence, and there are many who believe that the truth must come out over time.