Returned from the next world: Ukrainian, wounded in Bucha, survived Russian atrocities by pretending to be dead; none of those taken prisoner survived

Taxi driver and father of four children, Ivan Skiba, at the beginning of the war, found himself defending one of the streets in the suburbs of Bucha and narrowly escaped death at the hands of Russian soldiers. All other Ukrainian men who were with him were less fortunate. Correspondent with the BBC Fergal Keen met with Ivan, the only survivor of the Ukrainians who were taken prisoner by Russia.

Photo: Shutterstock

to lie among the dead

There is a desire to exhale. Take one big breath to release the pressure. But Ivan knows that he will die if he does this. The temperature is just above zero. Warm breath rising into the cold air will turn into steam and alert the killers. They're already checking the bodies of the men they've just shot and making sure they're dead by taking control shots at those who still show signs of life. He hears one of the Russian soldiers say, “This one is still alive!”

Ivan wonders if they are talking about him? Maybe about someone else? He is already preparing himself for death. Blood is coming from a wound in his side. Another Russian soldier says: “He will die on his own!”

A shot is fired that hits someone else. At such moments, a person struggles with various desires. A bullet wound in the side causes excruciating pain, but a scream can be fatal. All this will return to him later in his dreams. But for now he will lie among the dead - just as motionless as his dead comrades.

Risen from the dead

Now Ivan lives in a small Polish village, where he found shelter for his family. He has a job. Children live in a place where they do not need to be afraid. Warm weather has come, and in the evenings the family goes to the local park, where Ivan fishes in the lake. The bruises on his face and body have already healed. But at night, when everyone is asleep, the wounds of memory open up. Ivan Skiba is a man who has risen from the dead.

When it all started in the early morning of February 24, Ivan was driving his taxi around Kyiv. He heard explosions. It was hard for him to believe that this was actually happening.

“I could not imagine that this would happen,” he says.

The dispatcher called and said that all taxis should return to base. 43-year-old Ivan took on any job to support his wife and four children. He drove a taxi, sometimes he repaired houses. That morning, his first thought was to take the documents, if they were going to run, they needed passports. He quickly drove 40 km towards Brovary, where they lived, and from there to Bucha, where his wife and children were visiting their mother. The family was to live there until they decided on a plan of action.

“There were various rumors that Russian troops were approaching Bucha. We started to arrange shelters in the basements, to bring things there,” Ivan recalls.

Three days later, on February 27, Russian troops approached the outskirts of Bucha. Almost immediately, they fell into a devastating ambush by Ukrainian artillery. A column of Russian paratroopers took up positions on Vokzalnaya Street when the roar of shells was heard. The enemies retreated temporarily. But they got angry, because they were sure that one of the local residents had informed the Ukrainian military about their whereabouts.

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By this time, people all over Ukraine had mobilized to protect the locals.

Bucha was no exception. Ivan Skiba and his friend Svyatoslav Turovskiy, godfather of his two-year-old daughter Zlata, heard that several people who fought in the eastern Donbas against Russian-backed separatists were forming a unit of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces in Bucha to defend cities during the war. Ivan and his friend joined them.

“We were on duty at checkpoints, checking documents and making sure that people did not carry weapons,” says Ivan. “We helped organize the safe exit of people because we knew the area.”

Ivan's detachment was poorly armed. For nine people - one rifle, a grenade and a pair of binoculars. Ivan and his comrades were on duty in shifts at the checkpoint on Yablunskaya Street. In peacetime, this is a pleasant place with a lake for fishing. Some houses overlook fields and orchards.

There is also an old factory complex built during the Soviet era, part of which has been converted into offices for local businesses. These buildings at 144 Yablunskaya eventually became a notorious Russian base.

By early March, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had already fled the country. But Ivan and his wife decided that the family should try to hide in Bucha for a while. He describes the atmosphere among the men who remained in Bucha as an atmosphere of defiance.

“There was no fear. There was a desire to unite, to come together. We were on our feet all the time. When we were not on duty, we distributed food in the cellars to those who took refuge there, women and children. There was no time to be afraid,” he says.

Everything changed dramatically on March 3rd. The Russian military returned in full force "in the afternoon, around lunchtime."

Ivan and other men began to take the cars away from the direction of the Russian advance. The indiscriminate shooting began. Rockets fell to the ground. He saw how a shell hit a car, and a woman with children ended up in a burning car.

There were eight people at Ivan's checkpoint, and with the Russian military approaching quickly, the men decided to try to hide. Directly opposite the Ukrainian checkpoint, on Yablunskaya Street, 31, was the house of Valery Kotenko. The 53-year-old man used to serve them hot drinks and food. Now he offered them shelter. Soon the Russian soldiers were outside.

“We could hear them and hear the movement of their armored vehicles. We were surrounded,” Ivan continues.

The men whispered to each other. They couldn't run. The Russian military had thermal imaging cameras that would have detected any escape attempt at night.

The men dropped their weapons and made up a story: if the Russians found them, they would say they were construction workers working in the area and were hiding from the fighting.

They corresponded with their wives and girlfriends. On the evening of March 3, one of the men, 39-year-old Anatoly Prikhodko, called his wife Olga and whispered that he could not speak because he could be heard.

“It was very quiet. My husband said they were hiding,” she says.

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The next morning, Yulia, the wife of delivery driver Andrey Dvornikov, received a message: “We are surrounded, we are sitting here, but I will leave here as soon as I have the opportunity.” He asked her to delete all messages and photos from her phone. And he said he loved her.

The last message from Anatoly came on the morning of March 4th.

"At 10:00 he texted me: 'We're still hanging in there.' This was his last message,” Olga clarifies.

Less than an hour later, the Russian military broke into the house.

Ivan Skiba recalls beatings and screaming with interrogations. The men were confiscated mobile phones and shoes. At 11:00 am, two different CCTV cameras recorded the men being led through Yablunskaya Street to house 144. Each of them kept one hand on the belt of the man in front, and the other on his head. They were lined up against a wall next to the Russian base and forced to kneel. Soldiers pulled shirts and sweaters over their heads so they couldn't see. They were beaten with rifle butts. According to Ivan, they shouted: “You are Bandera. You wanted to burn us with Molotov cocktails. Now we're going to burn you alive."

The Russian military intimidated everyone with the murder of 28-year-old store employee Vitaly Karpenko. After that, one of the men admitted that they were from the territorial defense. As a result, the beatings intensified.

Ivan Skiba and another man, Andrei Verbovoy, a carpenter and father of one, were brought into the building. During the subsequent interrogation, a bucket was put on Ivan's head and he was forced to bend over and lean against the wall. Bricks were placed on his back, one by one, until he fell. He was beaten again and hit with a brick on a bucket on his head. At some point, he heard the military tell Andrei Verbovoy that they would shoot him in the leg. A shot sounded. After that, he no longer heard Andrei.

Then Ivan was taken out of the building to other men.

Some of the events were seen by local residents, who were ordered by the Russians to gather at house 144, but kept away from the detained men.

Lyusya Moskalenko told how a Russian officer advised her that she should close her daughters’ eyes because they would see something they would never forget: “He told us: “Don’t look at these people lying on the ground. These are not people. This is absolute filth. Dirt. They are not people. They are animals."

Her sister Irina Volynets was there with Lucy. Both women recall the noise of Russian armored vehicles, the sounds of gunfire, and neighbors' dogs fighting each other. There seemed to be madness all around.

And then Irina was shocked. She saw that her former classmate Andrey Verbovyy, a boy who had been sitting next to him at the next desk from kindergarten and all school, was lying on the ground, bleeding. Just a few weeks ago, they walked home from the mall together. A sheet was thrown on the ground next to him.

“He was lying there, all hunched over from the cold. He looked straight at me. We looked into each other's eyes," she recalls. Irina wanted to come over and cover her old friend with a sheet - at least something that could warm him. But she didn't.

“It wasn’t so much fear as desperation,” she explains. “I was very confused then and could not understand how this happened, why my classmate was lying on the ground.”

Everything happened so fast. And then Irina saw that her son Slavik was among these people. He was seized separately, beaten, and then brought to the others. Standing in the row, Slavik saw blood on the ground nearby and heard the Russian military talking about a wounded man. Almost certainly it was Andrei Verbovy.

“I heard them talking among themselves that they would kill him because he would not survive,” Slavik recalls.

Irina found the officer and asked to save Slavik. The military man listened to her, then called a Ukrainian informant—perhaps one of the detainees who had split after the execution of Vitaly Karpenko—and asked him: “Is he one of them?”

"No," came the answer. Slavik was released to his mother. The residents were told to go home, but Irina remembers an ominous feeling as she left: "I was afraid that something terrible would happen."

The next day, March 5, Andrei Verbovoy's wife Natalya sent him a message: “Where are you? I have your chain, the amulet too. I protect you from everything bad. We are praying for you. We are waiting for your call. Write us at least two words.

By that time, Andrew was already dead.

Ivan Skiba felt that time was running out. By the late evening of March 4, two of the eight people captured with him were dead.

“The Russians started talking among themselves about what they would do with us. The conversation was: “What should we do with them?” - asks one. The second one replies: “Then finish him off, just take him out so they don’t lie around here,” recalls Ivan.

The remaining men were led around the corner into a small courtyard. From under the edge of his clothes, Ivan saw the body of a man lying on a small concrete platform. He had obviously been shot before.

The Russian military began to abuse their victims. “They enjoyed the execution, used obscene language, said: “That’s it. You'll be kaput."

Ivan recalls the last exchange of remarks with his comrades: "We said goodbye to each other, that's all." Among those with whom he said goodbye was Svyatoslav Turovsky, the godfather of his daughter.

According to Ivan, Anatoly Prikhodko suddenly decided to run away, but he was immediately shot dead. Then the Russians opened fire on the rest.

“I felt a bullet hit me in the side,” Ivan continues. “She hurt me and I fell.”

Ivan does not remember how long the soldiers were around. When he realized that they were gone, he ventured to look out from under his jacket. The yard was deserted. This was his chance. He reached out to the pair of legs next to him, the legs of the dead man he'd noticed when they'd first entered the yard. Ivan pulled off his shoes to put on himself, crawled to the fence and climbed over it into the neighboring gardens. Then he overcame another fence, and ended up in a house abandoned by the owners during the shelling.

In the house, Ivan treated the wound with an antiseptic, which he found in the bathroom, and changed into clothes left by the owner. Then he wrapped himself in a blanket and tried to sleep. But voices disturbed him. Russian voices. It turned out that several Russian soldiers were resting in the house.

“They saw me and began to ask who I was and what I was doing here,” says Ivan.

The man convinced them that he was the owner of the house, and his family was evacuated. His wounds, Ivan explained, were from shelling. The soldiers believed his story, but said that he could not stay there. They said they would take him to their base for medical treatment. And again Yablunskaya, 144.

“I was scared what would happen next - from one captivity to another,” Ivan admits.

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But he was lucky. At the base, military doctors treated his wounds. If the soldiers who shot him were nearby, they either did not notice his return or did not recognize him. He was placed with civilians hiding in the bunker of the building. After a few days they were allowed to leave.

The bodies of the murdered men who, along with Ivan, defended Bucha, remained lying in the yard, where Russian soldiers dumped garbage, during the remaining month of the occupation. Ivan found his family, hiding from the war, at home. They were able to escape from Bucha and eventually from Ukraine to Poland.

The military defeat forced the Russian troops to retreat. They retreated from Bucha on 31 March and headed north towards the border with Belarus.

The invaders left behind numerous traces of presence, from banal obscene graffiti on the walls to potentially significant for future investigations.

For example, on the floor of house 144, on Yablunskaya Street, they found a soldier's bank card and tracked him to Pskov, where there is a large base of airborne troops. Other journalists found evidence pointing to the same units - the 104th and 234th air assault regiments.

One of the inhabitants of Bucha found Ivan Skiba's mobile phone left by the Russians during the retreat. It contained a history of calls made to several numbers in Russia.

These records do not link any of the callers directly to the massacre, the phone may have simply been given to a large group of soldiers. But they can help narrow down the suspects to small units within the regiments present when Ivan and others were shot.

The massacres in Bucha are now the focus of a huge war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court and Ukraine. The Ukrainian investigation is led by a lawyer who until recently was best known for investigating police brutality, Yuriy Belousov. He hopes those responsible will eventually be brought to justice.

“The Russian soldiers who committed this crime may be detained somewhere,” he suggests, pointing to the recent trial of a Russian prisoner of war accused of killing a civilian near Kyiv. But the main targets of the investigation are Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian military and political elite.

“It was planned in advance,” says Belousov. - From the very top they gave instructions on how to behave. So those who are at the very top in power are suspected of committing crimes, guys who, let's say, actually unleash a war. This is a chain of people whose decisions led to the invasion of Ukraine.”

When there is a trial, Ivan Skiba will become an important witness. In the meantime, he works together with the Pole, who provided the family with asylum. And although the Russian troops are physically far away, the horror still comes at night.

“You wake up because you are looking forward to getting shot in the head. I have this feeling. It rolls like a wave, ”Ivan confesses.

Ivan's son has a friend, a teenage boy who is only a few years younger than him. Ivan tells that the teenager is the child of his murdered friend and godfather of his daughter Svyatoslav Turovsky. The boy and his mother moved to Poland with Ivan's family.

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