“He wanted to become a doctor”, in Boutcha, the pain of a grandmother who came to get her grandson’s death certificate

The grief of Boutcha’s families in Ukraine is acute. In the morgue of the tortured city, the bodies continue to arrive. 400 of them have been found since the Russian army withdrew from the region at the end of March. Every day, families bring empty coffins to collect the body of their deceased, or come to collect death certificates.

This is the case of Havlyna. On her laptop, she shows us a video. We see a family reunited, a party, a cake, a smiling teenager. It was in January for Vania’s birthday. He was Havlyna’s grandson, he was 15 years old. “He was fleeing in the car with his mother and his little sistersays the bereaved grandmother. The Russians shot at them. They went out. Vania shouted to them: ‘Run, I’ll catch you.’ His mother turned her head and saw her son collapse in a field. His body remained there for four days. The Russians had taken his jacket and his sneakers.” A neighbor picked up the body and buried it in the garden. He stayed there for two weeks before being exhumed.

Havlyna recalls: “He liked to walk with his sister. He wanted to become a doctor… He did judo, computer science. He was also a little lazy, very nice too, very good. He was 1.90m tall, 44 shoes. A boy strong with curly hair.” At the Boutcha morgue, she has just retrieved her grandson’s death certificate. She has prepared the things for her funeral: “Pants, a shirt, a suit. But her mother told me that Vania didn’t like suits. I have to buy shoes too, because we had to cut the ones we put on her when we buried him in the garden: they were too tight for his swollen feet.”

His 9-year-old little sister, whom he adored, went into exile in Germany because of the war and will not be there. “In the photos I receive, my granddaughter is no longer smiling”, says Havlyna with sadness. Then the grandmother’s eyes fill with tears and she adds: “She knows her brother is dead but doesn’t accept it. She waits for Vania to call her…” The teenager will be buried on Tuesday April 26 at the Boutcha cemetery.