"Ukrainians, unlike us, are burying their dead in the open and with honors," wrote in the Novaya Gazeta columnist Alexei Polikovsky.
First, the dead person has no name and surname. Just killed. Everything is very short, sparingly. A few words in the summary of another day lasting the fourth year of the war, another unit in the statistics of irretrievable losses, another blurred, fuzzy figure in thick winter uniforms, lying on the snow in the outskirts of Avdeevka or Novotoretsky. And nothing more is known.
Then there is a name, a surname and a few details of an already discontinued human life. They are reported by the military commissariat, or the regional administration, or the brigade in which he served: he was born ... studied ... worked ... the city ... village ... military unit ... photo. All of them, imprinted on these unadorned amateur photographs, knew that they were killing in the war, but according to the usual human habit of not believing in their own death, they did not think that they would be killed precisely. The killed were going to survive the war and live happily ever after and so in the photos they smile, laugh, shyly look at the lens, posing in the summer field, at their home, sometimes with relatives, sometimes with friends.
Very little remains of them, because they are usually young and unknown.
Vadim Sapescu was killed on March 2. Was born in the village of Chernaya near Odessa. On the photo in the Adidas sports jacket and ski cap is, laying his hands in pockets, against the background of the Orthodox church with golden domes. Looks younger than his thirty-three years old. Probably, was a believer.
Alexander Sivko died on February 25. Twenty years, by profession electrician. Lived in the village of Peskovka, Kiev region. Volunteer came to the military enlistment office. On the photo in a body armor, for the strap of which was stuck a small flower. Did not help the bulletproof vest, did not take the death of the flower.
On February 23, Sabina Galitskaya, a military nurse, died. Twenty-three years, before the army worked as a midwife in a rural hospital. Was killed in a car when she went with medicines to provide medical assistance to civilians. A beautiful girl in a camouflage T-shirt and a baseball cap, unable to hide her light blond hair.
On January 30 Artem Skupeyko, twenty-two years old, who lived in the village of Gornostaevka, Kherson region, was killed. From twenty-two years of his life he served in the army for five years, he fought the last two years.
On December 21 Artem Gulsko, twenty-five years old, from Zhytomyr, died? tall, handsome guy in military uniform, with a vest in a shirt cut, in a blue beret, in high tibia. Similar vests, berets, berets are worn by the same tall, stately, self-assured guys in our army.
I do not call all Ukrainians who died this winter, everyone can not be called in one text. There are weeks when they die every day, there are two or three days, when nobody dies, and then again begins a uniform, monotonous, everyday murder.
Be sure to tell when and where the funeral will be. Mostly buried in villages, in villages, in small towns. From there these guys. But there are also from Kiev, Kharkov, Zhytomyr, Odessa. By places of funeral you can study the geography of Ukraine. Once I was there, I remember the huge fields with sunflowers, the white huts in the gardens, the soft southern dialect of hospitable people, the blue domes of the churches, the cozy peeking out of the green crowns. Now past the blue domes and huge fields sweep buses with flashing lights on the roof and black ribbons on the door handle, and on the side of people come and kneel.
For hundreds of meters and miles stretch chains of kneeling people. So Ukrainians say goodbye to their dead.
Men take off their hats, caps. The men on their knees are thirty years older than the boy who is being taken in the coffin, women in plain coats and kerchiefs kneel on their knees, children of school age kneeling on the lap and see how, with no threatening and solemn impetuosity, this terrible bus.
Entire villages and towns in full force take to the streets to greet the arriving bus with the coffin. Healthy muzhiks in camouflage and with bandages on the sleeve take out the coffin from the back door and carry it. It seems, how do we know all the details and details of the funeral, how do we know how they are there, in this bristling machine guns and gunpowder suddenly bruised from us, exhausted, poor, bloodied, suffering Ukraine? But in an age of continuous communications and open Internet, you can not hide anything. We see everything, if we want to see: a strip of cloth with prayers on the forehead of a young sergeant lying in a coffin, and concentrated faces of the military carrying icons, to which pure white towels are thrown, and a brown cross raised over the funeral procession, letters of the name of the One who gave his life for the people, and bright flowers in the frost, and put on the coffin the Ukrainian flag.
Farewell occurs in poor rooms with yellowish wallpaper, with white tiles, with painted painted floors. Coffins stand on stools, and women with red, tear-stained eyes in a trance mutter prayers. They speak quietly, but who wants to hear, he hears this persistent, relentless, many-voiced prayer mumbling of Ukrainian women, which reaches Moscow from snow-covered Volyn villages, Kiev villages, towns near Zhitomir, cities on the Dnieper. Who wants to see, he sees how Sabina Galitska's mother is stroking her white lifeless hand. Yes, everything, everything can be seen and heard in our time, and no Roskomtsenzura can prevent it.
We killed the dead in this war quietly, secretly. Lev Shlosberg revealed the secret and got a brick on the head. And what do Ukrainians have to hide? They did not start a war, they did not invent it, they did not invade a foreign country, they were attacked, they defend themselves, what should they hide? They bury their dead openly.
Enter military bands. Under their painfully familiar, tiring, nervous pulling sound, clutching their hands convulsively to their mouths, weeping, with wet faces, they follow the coffins on the snow that has been ground by hundreds of feet of women in black kerchiefs and cheap stigans bought in rural shops, sick legs, covered with warm trousers, old women with oval wreaths in their hands, are huge men with jackets open on their chests? Ukrainian craftsmen, who know how to build houses well, lay ovens, lay water pipes, arrange wells. Peaceful, good-natured Ukrainian muzhiks, I know their phlegm, their humor. And from the straw baskets under their feet, on the snow, girls are pouring red petals of living roses.
At the morgues and churches, on the tables covered with shawls with embroidered patterns, lofty, lush, round Ukrainian bread freezes in the frost. In the glasses hard yellow candles on a light frost. From the portraits in the frame, with a black corner tipped at the corner, look serious, calm and now permanently unchanged faces of those who killed a sniper at Talakovka, or burned a shell under Katerinovka, or turned into a bloody mush of a mine in an unnamed field near Lugansk.
Scary, wild scenes tear at the heart. Screaming mother Maxim Perepylitsa, who died on November 25 last year, rushes to the coffin. He is buried on his birthday. "Bozhechko, I'm happy today that I'm very happy with my mother's fate ... then, are you being held by me, sinochka?" "How painful, how defenseless is her Ukrainian speech.
Why did they kill her son? Who killed? Who organized this vile war? Who takes revenge on Ukraine and its people for their choice, for their courage, for their freedom, for their Maidan?.
The father's hand spreads a paper icon on the chest of his son lying in a coffin with unfaithful movements.
The fourth year of the war. One after the other flashing, jumping, rushing pictures of beautiful, bright, stylish modern life: Mask rockets, Hollywood movies, Olympics, medals, NHL, KHL, # MeToo ... In the excitement of news, in the media noise, in the information crack, shots are not audible.
They are somewhere far away, not where we are. But this winter, just like in all previous seasons, Ukrainians are killed every day or every other day, routinely, routinely, as if they sacrifice a cruel idol in a senseless sadistic ritual. On trampled snow, between fences and fences, past poor houses and snow-capped roofs, laborers with naked heads standing by the fences with gloomy faces, past women in dark shapeless hats choking with tears, walk across Ukraine to the cemeteries of a procession with coffins.