LVIVSKY OTRUBI, Ukraine — More than 15,000 people have gone missing since Russia invaded Ukraine, the International Commission on Missing Persons estimated Friday. This is the story of the two of them.
After Russian forces withdrew from the southern port city of Kherson and surrounding regions earlier this month, 26-year-old Serhiy Novosad returned to the small village of Lvovsky Otrubi, where he grew up, in search of his father and grandmother. me.
As the Russians’ fortunes declined in recent months, their occupation tactics became increasingly barbaric, and Mr Novosad begged his father and grandmother to leave and go with him to Kyiv. But his father, also named Serhiy Novosad, won’t have it.
He is a farmer and has to take care of his fields, he said. City life is not for him. The two men were able to stay in touch until the last days of the Russian occupation. But when the Russians withdrew from the village in early November, his father’s phone stopped working.
After being unable to contact him on November 10, Novosad began a three-day journey from Kiev to search for him and his grandmother.
When he arrived at the family home, he found Ukrainian soldiers living there. He asked them where his father was. They shrugged and pointed to what appeared to be a makeshift tomb with a cross in front of the house just across the street.
Reluctantly, he went to investigate.
The first thing he noticed was his father’s shoes lying in a narrow trench dug in the front yard. But before he could take a closer look, he had to wait for a demining team.
The Russians used the family home as some sort of base, and were surrounded by discarded Russian uniforms and boots, dozens of empty ammunition crates, obscene graffiti scrawled on the walls, hot dogs half-eaten and canned meat.
And the threat of mines.
Rostyslav Smirnov, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Minister, said the scale of mining around Kherson was confusing. He said that while more than 5,000 landmines have been cleared, they are still everywhere, including in children’s toys. He said: “There was a landmine between two soccer balls.
After commandos removed the wooden cross to make sure it wasn’t rigged, Ukrainian police officers this week began clearing dirt from the shallow grave.
Mr. Novosad recognized his father’s feet. He also discovered his grandmother’s cane could be seen through a thin layer of soil. Bodies covered in blood, bruises and bullet holes show that Serhiy Novosad, 49, and his mother, Lyubov Novosad, 78, met a devastating end.
Andriy Kovalenko, prosecutor at the Kherson regional prosecutor’s office, said their deaths would add to the more than 6,000 criminal cases opened in and around Kherson since the start of the war, based on on the testimonies of people who have fled the area.
The Russian retreat from Kherson to the other side of the Dnipro River took place over several weeks, during which time Russian troops had time to systematically loot the city and, according to Ukrainian officials, cover up the evidence. about war crimes.
Only now, with the Russians withdrawn from the area, has it been possible to independently investigate allegations of crimes, including torture, kidnapping, murder and sexual violence.
But that work is complicated by the fact that Russian forces are now stepping up their shelling of Kherson city and surrounding towns and villages, promising more death and destruction in the weeks and months and next month.
