VYSOKOPILLIA: Tamila Pehyda, a retired school teacher, looked on in tears as gravediggers exhumed her husband’s remains and a forensic pathologist examined them to establish the cause of death.
As suspected, Serhiy, who was 70 when he died in June in the southern Ukrainian village of Vysokopillia, was killed by shrapnel during heavy artillery shelling as Ukraine sought to recapture territory from the Russians.
The grisly process is being organised by Ukrainian authorities who are gathering evidence of how people died and whether potential war crimes have been committed by Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
They, and many of the relatives involved, want to hold Russia accountable for what has happened since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb 24.
“Of course, they must be responsible for everything, both morally and physically,” Tamila told Reuters on Monday as she stood by her late husband’s temporary grave. How much grief they have brought here. To children, to grandchildren.”
Like many Ukrainians from villages and towns that have been largely flattened in artillery exchanges and close combat, she fled Vysokopillia when she could. Serhiy decided to stay behind.
So did Tetiana Muzychko, 58, deputy head of the local municipality who ran to Serhiy’s house when she heard loud blasts. She said he was conscious when she found him, but the injuries to his legs and lower body were so severe that he died.
“The wounds were incompatible with life,” she said as she comforted Tamila on a cold, sunless day.
Snow powdered hastily dug graves where Muzychko said more than 20 villagers killed in the fighting were likely buried.
“They (Russian forces) said: ‘Why are you shooting at us? We came to free you.’ I asked them: ‘Free us from what? From the fact that we live well, better than you?'”
She said she hoped Russia would be held accountable at the highest level for alleged abuses during the war, including by the International Criminal Court in the Hague.
“They must answer for everything they have done.”
Moscow has previously denied allegations it has targeted civilians, and has rejected accusations of war crimes. Tens of thousands of people – both combatants and civilians – have been killed in the fighting.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine in what it called a “special operation” to degrade its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists. Kyiv rejects this justification as a sham.
Tamila was to bury her husband in a permanent grave. According to tradition, she placed Serhiy’s hat, glasses and comb in the coffin before his remains were interred.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
