Ash bends over a barely turned mound of dirt in Irpin’s graveyard. The Orthodox cross is decorated with fir branches and artificial flowers. Her stepfather died on March 19. “A shell hit his apartmenthe says. The blast threw him and he fell seven stories.” Sacha then places a glass of vodka and candy on the grave. For Ukrainian All Saints’ Day, we pray for the souls of the dead. “Here there is already the grave of my mother and many friendsexplains Sasha. But to see all his new graves, we’ve never seen that. It’s really terrible. I have no words.”
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In Ukraine, the “day of the dead” was celebrated on Sunday, May 1. A special Ukrainian All Saints Day in Irpin, which is one of the martyr villages. The Russian soldiers left on March 28, many of the bodies of civilians killed by bullets, in bombardments or by mines are still in the morgue for investigation and identification. The mayor estimates the number of civilian casualties at 300.
Around Ash in the graveyard, there are gaping holes and shovels. The overwhelmed funeral services are looking for reinforcements. At the end of an alley, Irina stops. “It’s mined”she cries paralyzed, but the cemetery has been secured. “What a tragedyexclaims Irina. It’s a tragic Toussaint, all these civilian deaths. It is absolutely necessary to stop the military actions, too many innocent people have died in vain.”
Some graves are ripped open by shells. There are people in the aisles, flowers in hand. Evguenia, her daughter Larissa and her granddaughter Alexandra spent three weeks locked in a shelter. They are still traumatized, they say, but they wouldn’t have missed this feast of the dead for anything in the world. “It is the Orthodox tradition of the Ukrainian peopleexplains Larissa. Every year, a week after Easter, we must visit our deceased loved ones. But this year, there are fewer people, many fled when the Russian soldiers occupied us, they haven’t come back yet.”
Her mother, in her Sunday best, wants to keep hope alive. “Soon here there will be crowds again in the aisles, everywhere cars, families, as before, when it was normal and there was no warwants to believe Evguenia. There were really not many people there, now we are going to go to the Church to pray.” “The Russians have left but we are still afraid“, insists Yevgenia, “we now tremble as soon as there is silence because afterwards, we always fear an explosion.“