Katia (3) - Vlodymyr's and Dasha's doughter in Vorzel, Ukraine, April '22
Bedside ('22-'23)
Irina had to make the most unspeakable choice for a mother. On 4 March, when the three of them fled, she, Ivan and her nine-year-old sister Daria […] the roads were already on fire. We had to turn back. The car was machine-gunned. Irina was wounded in the hands. Ivan had a hole in his chest. He was still conscious, but could not move. The car was out of order. He had to walk.
Ivan said to his mother: "Go ahead, it's dangerous to stay here, I'll catch you."
Irina could not carry him. What to do, save Daria or stay with Ivan? Irina left, telling herself that she would seek help to return to her son. She managed to reach her house and get her daughter to safety. Then, frantically, she called everywhere, the police, the emergency room, the hospital. All in vain. The place where Ivan was was too dangerous, especially at night, with the curfew: anyone outside at that time of the day was targeted, by both Russians and Ukrainians. As the hours ticked by, Irina sank into a cottony delirium, convinced that her beloved son had returned. At dawn, she set off on the road again. It was too late. Ivan lay with his arms crossed and his legs pressed together, as if he had wanted to warm himself in the icy night. His eyes were wide open, staring at the blind sky. When we heard this detail, we said to ourselves that we had never heard anything so atrocious as this lonely death of a kid looking at the night, shivering with cold.
The Russians would not help the mother to carry the son. It took Irina several days to find neighbours who agreed to accompany her with a wheelbarrow to bring back her son's remains. She then washed her beautiful Vania with rainwater from the cistern.
by Doan Bui for @lobs in April '22
Fragments of Doan's text read in Polish
Bucha trade center destroyed by shellings, Ukraine, April '22
Masha Golovan (22) after visiting her fathers tomb in Matuzhyn cementary, Ukraine, April '22
Ina (33) with Stepan (few months) from Melitpol, Zaporozhye district in House of Mums near Warszawa, Poland, 2 Feb '23
Artiom (7) from Pavlograd in House of Mums, near Warszawa, Poland, 2 Feb '23
The old man points to 3 March. Then he stops abruptly, his voice broken, his eyes misty, his mouth twisted by a silent sob. Igor, his grandson, was 15 years old. On the evening of 3 March, he was shot by the Russians in front of the cellar entrance.
[…]
The old man has always kept his diary in Vorzel, a village in the Boutcha district where he has lived all his life. Every day, the weather report, and a short note about the potatoes growing in the vegetable garden, or the return of the storks. All the tiny things of everyday life, simple and important, that told of the forgotten time of peace. Then on 24 February, the day of the invasion, he noted: "3°C cloudy. Those bastards have started the war. They're bombing Gostomel [the airport]. I went to the petrol station, we waited for 3 hours."
"February 25. 3°C, clear weather. They bombed Vorzel. Sergei [Igor's older brother] was wounded near the supermarket."
"February 28. - 2°C, clear. We survived another night. There is no electricity or water.
Until 3 March, when Igor is shot. On the 4th, perhaps for the first time in his life, Leonid does not record the day's weather. Igor's body is still abandoned on the embankment. The Russians forbid them to go and get it. The mother and grandmother beg but are told to keep quiet. Everyone is afraid that the Russians will finish the job and liquidate everyone. So Igor stays there, without even a sheet to cover him.
[…]
They were no longer entitled to this sacred ritual, to prevent the bodies from being eaten by animals: they lay on a road, in a ditch, inaccessible because of the bombs, the shooting, the Russian tanks.
by Doan Bui for @lobs in April '22
Chorny (21), Hospitallers Medical Battalion Training Center established by Yana Zinkevych, Dnipropetrvsk Oblast, June 2023
Hospitallers Medical Battalion Training Center established by Yana Zinkevych, Dnipropetrvsk Oblast, June 2023
Konstantin (49) in the cellar of the building he calls his home. On the begining of June the frontline went through the Velyka Novosilka until the Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed it a few km away from the village. Velyka Novosilka (Donetsk Oblast), June 2023
Vladymyr's (74) apartment. Velyka Novosilka (Donetsk Oblast), 29 June 2023
Galina Ilkova (71) in her garden destoryed by a Russian missile, Pokrovsk, June 2023
[…] The people down below were on the lookout for the arrival of the chaplains and their precious cargo of tinned food, rice, pasta and water bottles. For the past year, this is what has enabled them to get by in this no-man's-land. Before the Russian invasion, almost 6,000 people lived in Velyka Novosilka. The vast majority have been evacuated, and there are no longer any families or children. But there are still 600 elderly people who are surviving somehow, refusing to leave their ruined homes. Like Vladimir, 74 years old, who takes us into his destroyed living room, talking to us, or rather shouting at us: he became deaf after a year under the explosions. On his arm, he shows us the scars of his injuries, fragments of a missile. He refuses to evacuate. […] He has to live in his cellar, with its walls oozing with damp, which he shows us around by torchlight. Too bad, because he's got his rose bushes upstairs… He holds us up, inexhaustible, wants to offer us roses.
[…]
A hundred metres further on, another cluster of grey shadows awaits us. They have come up from the school's basement, a maze of corridors and blind rooms suffused with the suffocating smell of mould. Around fifty people have been living there for a year. In the cots, you can see a few immobile bodies, too weary to move, emaciated forms awaiting death. In one corner, an empty tent with a stove. This is where, last winter, the villagers had put a sick old man, hoping he would be less cold than outside. He died before spring arrived and was buried in the courtyard. The most courageous put away the provisions. Bottles of water, bottles of hydro-alcoholic gel and wipes are thrown in: the village has been without running water for a year.
[…]
At the same moment, a shrill whistle rips through the eardrums: a fighter plane splits the sky, dives down, leaving a plume of smoke. No one, not even the dogs, was moved. We ask Vitaly if it's a Russian or Ukrainian plane, and he laughs. But it's our guys, of course! It's a splendid Ukrainian SU-25 that's going to take out the Russians! Glory to Jesus!by Doan Bui for @lobs in June '23
Valera (8), Protestant church support center in Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast, June 2023
Luba, mother of Ivan Bas, on her son's funeral. Ivan was a soldier killed on the frontline of Russian invasion on Ukraine. Cherkasy cementary, June 2023
Yuri (28), Ukrainian soldier wounded in Donetsk Oblast by a Russian drone charge. Kyiv City Clinical Hospital no 3, June 2023
Natalia (12), gymnast, Pershotravensk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, June 2023
Diana (16) with her boyfriend Vlad (16), Pershotravensk, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, June 2023
[…] The artillery thunder with metronome regularity. Yeva, 80, disabled and blind, lives in a cellar with her son Konstantin, 49, who must be one of the youngest in the village. […] He is told that there are volunteers who could evacuate his mother and bring her and her dogs to safety. Konstantin would like to call, but the connection is erratic and Velyka Novosilka is literally cut off from the world. On a battered wall, he writes with chalk the telephone numbers we dictate to him.
[…]
Galina, was injured by shards of glass, but she is still alive - a miracle. "It was 8.30pm and I was doing some gardening. My son told me to go home because it was late and missiles often strike at night. Two minutes later, it exploded", she recounts. The garden was nothing but a huge crater, the second floor of the house was shattered and the dog, traumatised by the explosion, was barking like hell.
[…]
Lena, who has lived here since 2014. She came from Luhansk […] Her husband had been enlisted on the Russian side, or perhaps it was on the Ukrainian side, it's confusing. He died from a piece of shrapnel in the head. His house was blown up in a bombing raid. Liana was pregnant. She was evacuated to this refuge in Pokrovsk. That's where Valeria, her daughter, was born and grew up... The little girl, aged 8, stares at us listlessly from her bed. Her eyes are big and sad, so sad. Since the invasion, she has stayed locked up in her room in the refuge because there is no school any more, only the computer screen. "But other children have arrived, so I've got friends," she says in her delicate voice.
[…]
Even though, according to a recent poll, 78% of Ukrainians have had someone close to them injured or killed in the war. […] In the recruitment offices, people no longer queue up as they did at the start of the war. Confession of an officer: "The volunteers? They're already there, at the front. Or in the cemeteries. So mobilisation was low-key: men were called up here and there and sent off to complete their military training. Then they are off to the front. by Doan Bui for @lobs in June '23
Dasha (12) from Dnipro in Juliusz Słowacki Secondary School in Przemysl, Poland, March '22
Palina (9) from Avdiivka in House of Mums near Warszawa, Poland, 2 Feb '23
Oleg in his house in Bucha, Ukraine, April '22
Oleg holding his phone with his photogtaph of a dead Russian sniper, Bucha, Ukraine, April '22
Yablonka Street is where, on 5 March, the life of 14-year-old Anna Mishchenko, who loved to paint and draw so much and dreamed of being admitted to the Fine Arts in Kiev, ended. Anna was with Tamila, her mother, and Janna, a volunteer who had offered to help them escape. Big brother Yevgeny tried to dissuade them: it was too dangerous to leave without waiting for the humanitarian corridor. He stayed in Butcha with their 83-year-old grandmother, in their flat near Yablonka Street. Anna and Tamila's car did not go very far. Half an hour later, Yevgeny tried to call, and there was no answer. He didn't know that his mother and little sister were already dead, nearby. He thought "their phones had been confiscated at the checkpoint". On 15 March, Yevgeny was evacuated with his grandmother through one of the humanitarian corridors and fled to Ivano-Frankivsk in the west of the country. He continued to post search notices on social networks to find his mother and sister:
"I thought they had been captured and taken to Belarus. And then, on 5 April, the car was found thanks to the number plate.There has been too much drama in Yevgeny's building, too many bodies buried in the backyards. The first floor neighbour, an old man who lived alone, was shot dead on his way to the fountain.
by Doan Bui for @lobs in April '22
Yuri (name changed) who escaped from Kherson District through Crimea, Russia and Belarus to Poland after surviving 10 months of occupation, Warszawa Wschodnia support center, Poland, February '22
Nastia (14), Katia (13) and Lazar (11) in Borodyanka, Ukraine, April '22
On another floor lives 20-year-old Tania and her father. She saw her mother executed by a sniper in front of her as the family went out to bring food to their grandmother. A bullet right between the eyes," says Tania. My father was walking ahead with a white flag, but the sniper aimed at my mother. It was like shooting a rabbit. Tania's great-grandfather is missing. It is impossible to know what happened because his wife lost her mind during the war. She sometimes talks about a body that was there on the stoop, but which had vanished.
by Doan Bui for @lobs in April '22
Irina (33) with Sonya (8), Kyiv, location: John Paul II Primary School in Przemysl, Poland, March '22
Galina's photograph of murdered Natia (7), Ukraine, April '22
Timofiey (11) in Zherdova, Ukraine, April '22
Nastia was 6 years old when she was hit by a bullet, in the car where the whole family was trying to escape. The parents had written the word "CHILDREN" in Russian on the car and hung white flags. Her older sister Lida, 11, with whom Nastya shared a room - you can still see their two small purple backpacks with their school books - was also shot in the corner of her skull. In the car, there was also the newborn baby. Seven children in all. Under fire, the family got out of the car in panic, Lida and Nastya were carried in, and everyone got down on their stomachs in the dust, pushing the children under the car. Then the father went to look for help. But neither the hospital in Boutcha, nor the emergency room, nor the police could intervene. Finally, Lida and Nastia were taken to a kindergarten, where a veterinarian had moved the animals from his clinic. The vet put them on a drip with animal painkillers. Nastia died there, among the dogs and cats. She died at 7.15 pm. And on the photo that an aunt of Nastia gives us, as if to prove that this horror is real, we see the little pale face of the dead girl, her eyes closed, wrapped in a colourful blanket. Galina, the grandmother, says:
"She was all dirty, full of dirt, because we had put her under the car while it was still pulling. So we had to wash her, darling, I couldn't realize she was dead, I thought she was asleep. But she was cold. And then we put her favourite white dress on her.
by Doan Bui for @lobs in April '22
Roman (12) and Andrey (10) playing teritorial defence at their perents garage in Bogdanivka, Ukraine, April '22
Przemysl Railway Station, Poland, March '22
