PUMPKIN, Ukraine (AP) – While listening to his father die, the boy lay motionless on the asphalt. His elbow burned where a bullet had pierced him. His thumb stung him from grazing.
Another killing took place on a lonely street in Bucha, a community on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where the bodies of civilians are still being found weeks after the withdrawal of Russian troops. Many of them were shot in the head.
14-year-old Yura Nechiporenko would become one of them.
Survivors describe soldiers firing rifles at their feet or threatening them with grenades only to be abducted by a cold-blooded colleague. But there was no one to detain the Russian soldier that March day, when Yura and his father, 47-year-old Ruslan, were cycling down a tree-lined street.
They were about to visit vulnerable neighbors sheltered in basements and homes without electricity or running water. Their bicycles were tied with white cloth, a sign that they were traveling calmly.
When the soldier stepped out of the black path to challenge them, Jura and his father immediately stopped and raised their hands.
“What are you doing?” Yura remembers the soldier asking. The soldier did not give Jura’s father time to answer.
The boy heard two shots. His father fell, his mouth open, already bleeding.
A shot fell into Jura’s hand and he also fell. Another shot hit him in the elbow. He closed his eyes.
The last shot was fired.
___
This story is part of an ongoing investigation by the Associated Press and Frontline, which includes the interactive experience of War Crimes Watch Ukraine and an upcoming documentary.
___
Yura’s extraordinary story, which alleges an assassination attempt on Russian soldiers, stands out when international justice experts descend on Bucha, the center of horrors and possible war crimes in Ukraine. More than 1,000 bodies have been found so far in Bucha and other communities around Kyiv. In Bucha alone, 31 children under the age of 18 were killed and 19 injured, according to local authorities.
“All the children were killed or wounded intentionally, as Russian soldiers deliberately fired on evacuating cars with” CHILDREN “signs and white cloth on them, and deliberately shot at civilian homes,” said the Bucha District Prosecutor General. , Ruslan Kravchenko told the AP.
The UN Office of Human Rights says at least 202 children in Ukraine were killed in the Russian invasion, and believes the actual number is significantly higher. The Ukrainian government’s census has killed 217 children and injured more than 390.
AP and Frontline, drawing on various sources, have independently documented 21 attacks that killed children who probably met the definition of a war crime, ranging from finding a child in a shallow grave in Borodyanka to bombing a theater in Mariupol. The total number of children victims of the attacks is unknown, and the report represents only a small fraction of potential war crimes.
Jura is a teenager, growing in himself, whirling and spotted, with dark circles under his eyes. His maturity has reached its peak. As he lies on the floor of his family’s home to demonstrate what happened, he shows the healing holes in his elbow.
His mother, Alla, takes a deep breath to calm herself. Jura, sitting down, wraps his arm around her, then puts his head on her shoulder.
On this terrible day, Jura survived the assassination attempt with the awkward grace of this teenage constant, his gray hood. He was shot in his place, and he felt himself move.
Jura then lay on the street for minutes, waiting for the soldier to move away.
Then Jura expires. He came to the kindergarten where his mother worked and where some residents used the basement as a shelter. They were shocked to see the boy and gave him first aid.
He knew he had to go home. He returned to the street, not knowing where the next soldier might be.
When he returned, his family called the police. Police said there was nothing they could do because they did not control the area, according to the family. The same thing was said by the ambulance.
Police told the family that officers did not know what to do with the case, according to the boy’s uncle Andrew. A prosecutor’s report described the murder and attempted murder in a few clear sentences, including the loss of a cell phone belonging to Jura’s father. It would help now, he was a lawyer.
Kravchenko told the AP that they continue to work on the Jura case and expressed confidence that the crimes committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be successfully investigated. Among other things, footage from dozens of surveillance cameras in Bucha is being analyzed, and an identification album with the faces of Russian soldiers is being put together.
In March, the International Criminal Court prosecutor announced that investigations into crimes against children would benefit in particular from a new trust fund. Children make up half or more of those affected by the conflict, but are often labeled as too vulnerable to testify or with inaccurate memories, according to Veronica Ober, the ICC prosecutor’s special adviser on child crimes.
The case of Jura is unusual.
“Prosecutors may want to take up the case because the victim is still alive and could potentially testify,” said Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University and a former special adviser to the U.S. Department of Defense. “It may be difficult, if not impossible, for a defendant to claim that they were somehow justified in trying to kill a child.
___
It was left to Jura’s family to remove his father’s body.
They did it the next day. Yura’s grandmother, who is in her 70s, begs Russian soldiers to allow her to approach the body.
With their pistols bent, they let her walk in front of them. Another soldier in the distance shouted, “Don’t come here or we’ll kill you.” But he did not shoot.
Jura’s father was brought home in a wheelchair. They wrapped it in a rug and put it on an old wooden door. Amid the sounds of shelling and gunfire, they buried him in the yard behind the woodshed, in one of the many makeshift graves dug hastily during the monthly Russian occupation.
Jura and his family left Bucha the next day on a sparse evacuation corridor. The wounded boy walked the streets first, holding a stick tied with a white towel and a white sling around his arm. The family had to cross the scene of the shooting.
As they approached the evacuation point, Russian soldiers asked where they were going. They asked what had happened to Jura.
“I was shot by a Russian soldier,” the boy replied.
At the same time, his mother was horrified. “I felt like everything was falling apart inside me,” she recalls. “I thought they were going to shoot us all.”
She asked the soldiers to let them go, saying it was getting late. They made.
The family left town that day.
___
The gray hood, bloodied to the elbow, is now at the center of the family’s quest for justice. The top seam of the loose fabric is cut. Jura’s mother insists that this is proof and cannot be dismissed.
The family returned to Bucha in mid-April after the Russians withdrew. Jura’s father was dug up and buried again in a local cemetery.
The boy’s family continues to play a detective, touring the shooting area for additional evidence and theorizing about the trajectory of the bullets. They interrogate neighbors and analyze holes in a metal fence.
As the family shows up on the AP stage, Jura wanders across the grass to the street with his head bowed, looking for shell casings. He is convinced that he can identify the Russian soldier, even though the soldier wore a balaclava on part of his face.
Jura will finish ninth grade this year after the electricity returns and he can resume online classes. Until then, he was a volunteer like his father, visiting older residents.
His mother is thinking of sending him abroad in the name of his mental health. She also needs a little distance.
“I’m never alone physically, but I may be alone mentally,” she said, almost in tears. “I’m trying to avoid that.”
Her son’s case is still a weak source of hope. There are courts and these courts will work, she said. No one has to go through what her son did.
Jura is afraid that they already have.
“It’s not just me who wants justice,” he said. “People in Ukraine are probably still being tortured and killed, even now.
Jura turned 15 on April 12. It was a quiet birthday. His father, a good cook, used to grill to celebrate.
On April 25, the day after Orthodox Easter, the family gathered again at the grave to mark 40 days after Ruslan’s death, according to local custom. Food blessed by a priest in Bucha for Easter – painted eggs, bread – was served with homemade pickles, chocolate and wine. A plastic bag of food was hung on the wooden cross.
Yura stood aside, quietly lit a candle, and placed it on the grave. Then he pulled a black hood over his head to block out the cold.
The boy’s uncle Andriy is watching him closely these days. Jura has always been a good child, but he has become nervous and restless, moving from one task to another. Andrew fears that the trauma of his death will overtake Jura and mourns his nephew’s damaged childhood.
“It tears my soul apart,” Andrew said in tears. “What we see is suffering after suffering … (Russian President Vladimir) Putin just decides to make us suffer and we do.
___
Frontline producer Tom Jennings contributed to this story.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war
Add Comment