the chilling story of a Boutcha survivor

Vitaliy Zhyvotovsky is still terrified by the atrocities he witnessed in Boutcha (Ukraine). In the city, for a week, he had to give up his house to the Russian soldiers who occupied the area. “I opened the door and saw guns pointed at me”, he says. In one room, the prisoners of the Russians were chained, beaten, tortured, mutilated.

“Boys were brought to the kitchen, I heard them on the stairs, they were being beaten, they were screaming, and then I heard louder screams. The soldiers were making jokes and then I understood that they were cut off their fingers”, says Vitaliy Zhyvotovsky. Scenes that traumatized him. “I close my eyes, I see these people with bags on their heads. Now my daughter has to take medicine for her heart”, he says. Boutcha has become the symbol of the atrocities of war.