At one of the entrances to Izioum, in northeastern Ukraine, a pine forest borders the checkpoint that gives access to this strategic city, occupied by the Russians from April to September 2022. Nothing appears there, but all the inhabitants know that these trees are cursed. That following the small sand path that leads, in the heart of the forest, to one of the city’s cemeteries, it is necessary, from the departure of the troops from Moscow, to cross a landscape that leaves you breathless. In fact, it is impossible not to see, lined up among the pine trees, the 449 holes made in the ground that serve as tombs and are marked with a summary cross, which commemorates the martyrdom experienced by Izioum.
It was there that the bodies of those who had the misfortune of crossing paths with Russian soldiers or who did not take care of their health were dumped, most of them in bags or with nothing at all. The gravediggers only wrote numbers on the crosses. When the city was liberated, the families exhumed the bodies and buried them with dignity elsewhere. Twenty of them remain unknown. “We will not touch these empty tombs, swears Marina Kolovorotna, head of the city council’s culture commissioneven to expand the old and narrow cemetery. There is no future without the past, these victims are our scars. »
Condemned to live with the scars of an occupation that cost the lives of almost a thousand civilians, out of the 13,000 who lived there at the time, Izioum still does not know how she will emerge from this terrible experience. Nicknamed “the key to Donbass” and a railway junction, backed by the Siversky Donets River and dominated by a high hill, this city irradiated throughout the region. Two years after living through hell, she still seems stunned, trying to find the missing thread of her story.
“Almost 80% of the infrastructure and 30% of the homes remain destroyed. this is how the first deputy mayor, Volodymyr Matsokin, describes it. Reconstruction is not easy, we are 50 kilometers from the front, and some pressure us to demolish them to erase bad memories, while others want us to preserve the buildings so we will never forget them. » Torn between the duty to remember and the will to live, the community celebrates its dead every year on September 10 along a route that connects symbolic sites of Russian abuses.
“Traces of previous life”
On the side of highway 1Ahem-May, an apartment building, destroyed on March 9, 2022 by a powerful air attack, is one of the settings for this commemoration. That day, 50 people who were taking refuge in the basements died suddenly after the building collapsed. “Every day I pass by, – confides the first deputy. We can still see the inside of the apartments, a mirror, clothes in the closet, traces of the previous life. Every time I feel a strong emotion and a responsibility. »
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