War. Stories from Ukraine

Ukrainians tell stories about their life during the war

“My mom was killed by a Russian sniper in front of my eyes. A bullet right in her forehead”, Tetiana, 20, a student from Bucha

by | 13 April 2022 | Bucha, War. Stories from Ukraine

Illustrated by Liubov Miau

“My mom was killed by a Russian sniper in front of my eyes. A bullet went right in her forehead,” says 20 year-old Tetiana from Bucha. Tetiana’s mother, also named Tetiana, was killed on March 24. Bucha had been occupied by Russian troops for several weeks by then. Tania, her mom and dad, and their two cats stayed in town.

Before the war, the girl studied at the Kyiv Polytechnic University to become a programmer. In February, her mom and she were watching The Crown, a TV show about the British queen. They hadn’t finished it because the war came to town. 

“Our house basement was not suitable to be a shelter, so we hid in the bathroom, then in the hallway. We heard explosions and gunshots, but my mom did not want to leave. Born in Bucha, she felt in control in her hometown. We argued but still didn’t go anywhere,” Tania says.

During the first week, they ate their stocks of cereals and canned food. Then the gas supply, water, heating, and electricity were gone. Shelling was heard in the neighboring streets. Evenings and nights were the scariest for Tetiana, they didn’t light the candles to avoid revealing their presence in the apartment. Cell phone connection was also very poor, once every few days the girl went up to the tenth floor of her house to make a call. Sometimes they managed to catch a weak internet signal, it was a blessing. So Bucha residents didn’t know the news. They started their days by sharing the scarce news about the situation in Ukraine with their neighbors.

They cooked together with their neighbors on a large fire in the yard, using all the wood they could find around. Tetiana’s family decided to visit her grandma occasionally, she lived in a private house with a stove and a well. But even there, Russians broke in from time to time.

“They searched houses, took people’s SIM cards, smashed smartphones, cut the internet and TV cables. I remember two such searches at my grandma’s,” Tania recalls.

Russians set the rules for the locals: a white ribbon to be worn on their arms and the curfew. Tetiana’s family followed those rules. On March 22 and 23, they stayed in their apartment. Russians wandered around the neighboring houses and regrouped their columns of military vehicles literally in the yards. They never reached Tetiana’s apartment. On the third day, it became quieter. The family needed food and water, so Tania, her mom and dad put white ribbons on and went towards her grandma’s house. The tragedy happened on their way back.

“We were walking single file, about half a meter away from each other. My dad was first, he thought he could protect us. Then my mom, and I was the last. We were walking through the factory area, no-one was there. Suddenly we heard a shot, without any warning. The sound was so loud that I went temporarily deaf in my right ear. One of us shouted, ‘Get down!,’ maybe it was me. My father and I dropped down immediately, and my mom fell. We were lying there for some time, and then started asking each other if everyone was ok. My mom wasn’t moving…,” Tetiana recalls.

The woman was shot in the head and bleeding to death. Tania took her hand and realized that her mom was dead. The sniper hit her right between the eyebrows. 

“He saw three people walking and deliberately targeted my mom. I don’t know why or what for. I sat over her and screamed. We didn’t know who was shooting, but we shouted to them that we were peaceful people, we didn’t have weapons, and asked them to call a doctor. No one responded,” Tania says.

Dad told Tetiana to get the wheelbarrow and went to the place where the shots were fired from to ask for permission to take his wife’s body away. The Russians ordered him to show his passport and then to undress. They explained that they were looking for a swastika tattoo. Then they asked what was in his backpack. There were vacuum flasks with tea.

“They asked him to pour a little into a cup, it seemed to them that the tea had a weird color. Then they forced him to drink the boiling liquid. They said, ‘You aren’t drinking enough, drink more. When I came back with a wheelbarrow, my father shouted to me to stay away. Then they put a bag over his head and took him somewhere,” Tetiana says.

Tetiana did manage to collect her mom’s body. Her granddad went to ask the Russian soldiers for her.

“The Russians asked him if he had ever seen any Banderites. Then they argued among themselves and brought him a half-ruined car, clearly stolen from one of the locals. They asked him if he could drive. Then they loaded mom’s body onto the backseat, and he drove it home somehow. I really don’t know how he did that because after he had a stroke, the right side of his body was paralyzed. My dad was missing for all that time, we didn’t know where he was and what was happening to him,” Tetiana says.

Her father came back in the morning and told them that the invaders were driving him from place to place with a bag on his head, changing cars, interrogating him, accusing him of looting and threatening to kill him. At some point, they asked him what he thought about this war. “It’s your liberating operation, so you liberated me from my wife, and my daughter from her mother,” he answered.

In the end, they threw him out of a car with his hands tied and a bag on his head. Somehow, he took the bag off and broke the rope. He saw that it was a different district in Bucha. So he spent the night with the locals, and in the morning he walked to Tetiana’s grandma’s house.

They buried Tania’s mother in the yard. Their neighbors helped them dig a grave and put the body down. One of the neighbors was a novice at the church, so he acted as a priest, said a prayer, he even had some incense, a candle, and a prayer book. It was important for the family to observe at least a minimal ritual. 

“My mom devoted her whole life to our family and house, she took me to various extracurriculars and music school. In 2014, she volunteered a lot, making camouflage nets and packing lunches for the military together with the Chefs’ Hundred. Then she helped to sterilize stray animals in Bucha. She cared a lot about what was happening in the town. On the eve of her death, she was optimistic, she believed that Ukraine would win soon,” Tetiana recalls. 

The next eight days, Tania and her father lived at her grandma’s. They only managed to leave after Bucha was liberated by the Ukrainian military.

“I was shocked looking around on the way out. I couldn’t believe that I saw a totally destroyed and burnt city, so beautiful and full of life not so long ago. It’s still hard to believe that all that happened to my family,” Tania says.

She lives in Kyiv now. They told their relatives about her mother’s death when they were leaving Bucha. “We were afraid to say that by phone because our relatives could have gotten too emotional and left their safe places to rescue us,” she explains.

Tetiana is waiting for the time when she can go back to Bucha, to check on her apartment and rebury her mother in the cemetery. She wants to have it documented as a war crime and hopes that the murderers will be punished. “I don’t know if it is possible to find the specific person who shot her but I want to do everything in my power so they can’t get away with it.”

A few days after evacuation, Tetiana’s university resumed online learning. Now she plans to study, get a profession, and understand how to live on. And to find out what happened with her grandma and her great-grandfather. They lived in Irpin, and communication with them was lost in the first week of war. “My great-granddad is over 90, he is a veteran of WWII. Who would have thought that he would face war for the second time?” Tetiana says.  

 Translated by Oksana Biliavska

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