We owe it to the dead and missing to tell their stories and to try to find some measure of justice, no matter how long it takes. Three hundred people follow the three coffins down the streets of the small Ukrainian village. Olga, Ihor, and Sashko Sukhenko’s funeral procession winds through the village of Motyzhyn, 27 miles from Kyiv. Olga Sukhenko had been elected the head woman of the village for the past 14 years. “They were killed for us,” says Halyna Mukha, “They could have left, but remained to help us, to provide for us.” This is a sentiment other residents repeat to me. According to multiple villagers’ accounts, Russian soldiers, who occupied the area in the early stages of the Russian invasion, kidnapped Olga and her husband, Ihor, on March 23. Six hours later, they returned to take the couple’s adult son, Sashko. On April 3, their mutilated bodies were found in a nearby forest. (…) After the liberation of Motyzhyn, the body of a man with visible signs of torture was found in a well with a rope around his neck; a woman who disappeared during the occupation has yet to be found. The investigation is ongoing. (…) In many occupied villages and towns in other Ukrainian regions — Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson — there is the same pattern. The families of local authorities, if not executed, have been targeted, threatened, and abducted. The villagers all say the Russians also looted, pillaged, and robbed.
via rolling stone: ‘They Were Killed For Us’: Ukrainians Bury Their Dead — and Accuse Russian Army of Mass Murder