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Borodyanka

Oksana's brother

The mass grave is being exhumed at the cemetery when a woman wearing a navy blue tank top suddenly appears. She looks concerned. She is walking around and asking people about something. This is Oksana.

She comes from Borodyanka but has lived in Tarnopol for many years. Her brother, Wołodymir, remained in the family home and still lived there until the Russians began to occupy Borodyanka. One day in March, he went to the city and the Russians sitting in the BTR armoured personnel carrier, which he was passing by, shot him in the head with a heavy machine gun. At least that's what Oksana's neighbours said. Those neighbours buried him in the garden of his family home.

 

Now, after the liberation, Oksana has come to exhume her brother. But he can't find gravediggers. She came to the cemetery, but everyone was busy there. The gravediggers hired by the city are now digging thirteen graves for victims of earlier bombings, and their superior says he needs all his workers.

 

Eventually, Oksana finds two men who have decided to help her. The neighbour who had buried Volodymyr earlier also came to help. As they dig up the body, Oksana calls the prosecutor's office for transport from the morgue.

Load 200 arrives (this is what the transport of corpses is called in Ukraine) with the police, who first gather evidence and make a report. They'll take the body to a truck and the morgue when they're finished.

Two days later, a doctor in the dissecting room confirmed that a headshot had killed Oksana's brother. Volodymyr's body will be returned to Oksana, and she will finally be able to bury him.

Ukrainian
Odyssey