Vlad Minchenko wakes every day with trembling hands. For hours, until it eases, he can’t message on his phone or even consider his previous work of making art or tattoos. But he can continue to retrieve bodies, scores of bodies, around the Ukrainian town of Bucha as part of a task that continues more than three weeks after Russian forces withdrew.
“I have collected a lot of bodies, more than 100,” he said.
The grim work for Minchenko and a small group of others began under occupation as the bodies scattered in streets or hurriedly dumped in yards apparently became too much even for the Russians. But the work was dangerous.
“We were told (by Russian troops) ‘Go there, 15 bodies are lying there.’ Others stopped three of us. They told us to go to the fence. We said that we wouldn’t go to the fence: ‘If you want to shoot us, shoot us here, we won’t be lying near a fence,’” Minchenko said.
He and his colleagues have crossed Bucha’s streets again and again, exploring its darkest…
Source: AP PHOTOS: The artist retrieving bodies in Ukraine’s Bucha
Category: International
