"Three-and-a-half years ago, Vadym Yevdokymenko lost his father during some of the worst war crimes in Europe since World War II. Sitting on a bench beside a walking path on a sunny day in September, the 23-year-old Ukrainian recounts the story with a preternatural calm and poise. He has become a face of efforts by his hometown to rebuild not just its homes and buildings but also to reconstruct its collective psyche."
"In the weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian soldiers occupied Bucha, just 20 miles northwest of Kyiv, the capital. During that month, they raped, tortured, and murdered more than 400 civilians, burying more than 100 of them in a mass grave. His father, Oleksii, was one of them, his body burned beyond recognition, with just his ID card nearby."
"Yevdokymenko feels their agony and has listened to every detail of their ordeals. Over the last three and a half years, he has helped coordinate an online network through which he has helped more than 70 other families in the Bucha and broader Kyiv region to work with investigators to identify their loved ones' remains or to track down whether they are still alive."
Vadym Yevdokymenko lost his father in the Bucha atrocities after Russian forces occupied the town following the 2022 invasion. Russian soldiers raped, tortured, and murdered more than 400 civilians, burying over 100 in a mass grave; Oleksii was burned beyond recognition with only his ID nearby. Yevdokymenko, 23, has become a public face of local rebuilding and collective psychological recovery. He has coordinated an online network that has assisted more than 70 families across Bucha and the Kyiv region to work with investigators to identify remains or determine whether relatives are alive, providing morsels of information that offer limited closure amid ongoing war.
Read at Psychology Today
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