Bucha native Mykola, 53, speaks in a stuttering and halting manner. He takes a drag on a cigarette to compose himself before telling his heart-wrenching story to Ukrainian journalist Oleskiy Pshemyskiy

Mykola lived in a basement for 34 days. He could have left, but being a property manager in charge of a 9-story building made him stay. On the first day that fighting reached Bucha, a shell came into his house—breaking through a wall and setting fire to a child’s bed. Luckily, he had his children evacuated earlier. Putting out the flame, Mykola and his friends led elderly people and women to the basement.

Once they seized Bucha, Russian troops started to break into houses. They would take men out into the streets and make them strip down, looking for tattoos. Two of Mykola’s friends, Leonid and Serhiy, were in their 50s. Another one, also named Leonid, was a bit younger; after Russian soldiers examined his passport, they said he was under 50 and could be drafted into the army. They forced him onto his knees and shot him in the head.

Leonid was the first friend Mykola had to bury. He dug a grave in the yard near the transformer house. Mykola says there are still blood stains there.

A few days later, Serhiy was killed. He stepped out to have a smoke and was struck by a bullet. They just opened fire without any warning.

When fighting intensified, the Russians just went insane, says Mykola. Before that, people would be able to leave the basements to cook a meal or breath some fresh air. As the tides began to turn, however, people locked themselves in their basements. One night, the soldiers began to bang on doors around the community, yelling and demanding that the inhabitants open up. It was clear that, as they were retreating from the town, the Russian soldiers wanted to break in and shoot as many people as they could, much like what they had already done to people nearby houses. Failing to break down the door at one residence, the soldiers threw a grenade that killed another of Mykola’s friends, Leonid, who had been holding the door closed from the inside. His body remained on the stairs till the next day when Russian soldiers knocked on Mykola’s door demanding that he clean up the place. ‘You have 20 minutes to clean it up’, they said.  When Mykola got to the scene, he saw that Leonid had had his head and legs torn off in the blast wave.

Mykola collected his friend’s remains into a bag and dug a new grave. It was the third friend he had lost. The grave was shallow, as the soil was hard, and he had little time and strength to get it done properly. His biggest worry now, he said, is that rain would wash away the sand, and the burial place could draw stray dogs.

Mykola could hardly hold back his tears. Finishing his story, he just broke down and said, ‘Thank you for hearing me out’.