Ukraine: pain everywhere

War crimes have been committed in Ukraine by the Russian army. United Nations investigators declared it the day before yesterday, Friday September 23, almost 7 months after the start of the war. Those who collect the clues since the beginning of this war are formal. From Boutcha to Mariupol, from Irpin to Sumy, north of Kharkiv, the elements are convincing.

And we have seen and heard it in the war reports, macabre discoveries have not been lacking: mass graves, evidence of summary executions of civilians, acts of torture, gang rapes, bombings of hospitals up to the maternity ward of Mariupol. Violence begets violence. Even when there is an aggressor and an aggressed, the aggressed can also be guilty of exactions. The long time of the investigations will tell. But today, the vast majority of war crimes are attributed to the Russian military. Ukrainians are so attached to showing their suffering in the eyes of the world that they sometimes err on the side of communication.

If reporters are sometimes targets on the front lines, it is because they are disturbing. They record, they note, they reflect, they analyze, they question. Quite the opposite of a narrative oiled by the military for propaganda. And communication always starts from both sides. Historically, information warfare is another front line. Thus, when the Ukrainian army liberated territories south of Kharkiv, kyiv immediately mentioned the discovery of mass graves in the Izium forest.

Éric Audra, sound engineer at Radio France, and Boris Loumagne, senior reporter at franceinfo were on assignment in the region. The Ukrainian army immediately organized a day for the press, to allow journalists to access the forest to find out. It is therefore with caution and meticulousness that the reporters progressed among the forensic doctors and scientific investigators.

In Izium, the vast majority of the dead perished under Russian bombs before the occupation of the city, and were buried there. The smell is pestilential. Further, a mass grave with 17 corpses of soldiers inside. In the devastated villages, the extended microphone to converse about the situations suffered becomes an outlet. Boris Loumagne confides it: a single question can lead to an answer that will last thirty minutes, an hour, an hour and a half.

This raped woman who did not commit suicide to raise her granddaughter, now that the Russians are gone, she and her brother want to find the rapists to kill them. This mother without news of her missing child, “help me find him”, she implores our helpless reporters. This old lady who is suffering and who is hungry, would like Boris to send her food parcels by post, once back in Paris, but which post? No postal service is operating in Ukraine anymore.

For 6 months that the inhabitants have been under Russian occupation, they haven’t seen anyone, apart from their neighbors and the Russians, who crisscrossed the city. And above all, not far from the border, they hear the agitation of Moscow which wants to regain its position, and no one here knows how long the Ukrainians will be able to preserve the city.

Éric Audra and Boris Loumagne will return. They have absorbed so much pain in the terrible stories that have been entrusted to them, that they wonder if they have not served as shrinks for a population that has none. And then there are still in the head, these bodies of the forest of Izioum, and this fucking smell.