Under a light snowfall, a corpse lies half covered by black plastic at one of the entrances to Bucha, on the outskirts of kyiv. . Silence reigns in the midst of the enormous damage suffered by streets, houses, buildings and vehicles. Just two days have passed since the escape of the Russian military from Ukraine.
Finally, they have to leave after being in Bucha and other surrounding towns. Four years later, EL PAÍS has confirmed who that body belongs to, under what circumstances he was murdered – four years ago this Sunday, March 8 – and who are the three Russian uniformed officers whom the Ukrainian police consider responsible. The invasion orchestrated by President Vladimir Putin has led to the opening of more than 216,000 cases of possible war crimes in Ukraine, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.
On April 3, this newspaper took some photographs and videos of the corpse – of civilian appearance – abandoned, like another half thousand civilian inhabitants, in the streets, gardens, homes and improvised graves of Bucha and other municipalities in the kyiv region. One of the images of that dead man illustrated , published on April 3.
But who is this man? What happened to him? In the place where he lies, panic still prevails, some explosions can be heard in the background and there is no one around. Among the population it is suspected that Russian soldiers are still straggling in the surrounding area and that they have planted mines in their retreat.
The first clue is offered by an accreditation abandoned next to the body, attached to a ribbon to hang around the neck. It corresponds to Sergey Emelyanov, an engineer at Kyivstar, a national mobile phone company. The company confirms his death, but avoids giving details. Over the months, the family members, one of the witnesses – who prefers not to make statements –, as well as the agents in charge of carrying out the investigation, are finally located. After months of investigations, they closed the list of suspects on February 26 of this year, while this report was being made. .
The three names supposedly involved are well-known soldiers who participated in the . They were members of the 234th Air Assault Regiment of the 76th Division of the Russian Armed Forces. The person responsible for giving the order for Emelyanov to be killed is, according to investigators, Yuri Kim, a platoon commander residing in the Moscow region who imposed his authority in the border area between . Two shots ended the engineer’s life; They were carried out by Vladislav Pervunin (originally from the Kirov region), a then 33-year-old sergeant, and Andrei Isakov (originally from the Pskov region), a 19-year-old corporal. Both were subordinates of Kim, 25, the same sources add.
Sergey Emelyanov, who was 37 years old at the time, and his family took refuge in the basement of one of their neighbors’ house when the occupation began and . There were about 20 people, explains Julia, his widow, who now lives in Norway with her 15-year-old daughter Polina. “It was a loud and terrifying situation. We didn’t know what was going to happen. The cell phone connection almost didn’t work. Despite the fear, we lived united with the neighbors, we supported each other, we shared what we had and we gave each other strength. Thanks to that solidarity we managed to resist,” says Julia, the same age as Sergey, through written messages. He recognizes that he still does not have the strength to have a conversation about what happened.
“On March 8, Sergey lost patience. There was almost no diesel left in his car” which was “essential simply to survive,” Julia says. “That day he decided to go get fuel. Other neighbors and I tried to stop him, we begged him not to go, but he didn’t listen to us. He left and never came back,” he says. As the agents’ work progresses, she gratefully points out that “memory and truth are what help us preserve dignity and justice.”
“Sergey called me before he left. I told him not to leave the basement. He said they no longer had food or water. During those two weeks, they had collected food from the houses of all the neighbors who had left. They did it with their consent,” explains his brother-in-law Aleksandr.
The researchers consulted have many more details. Shortly after leaving the house, Emelyanov runs into a Russian checkpoint on a street. They make him get out and the soldiers keep his car, a blue Volkswagen. He decides to continue on foot along the train track to return home. But it falls into the hands of the two soldiers who, after informing Kim by phone, always according to the police report. A first shot knocks him to the ground and a second one finishes him off and ends his life.
Next, they search his clothes, but only take his phone. They leave their headphones, their Apple wrist watch, their professional ID, their keys and about 3,000 grivas in cash (about 60 euros at the current exchange rate). The agents show a photo of the file in which all those belongings appear.
As in other cases, to delve into the investigations. And more so in this case that it was a line from a Kyivstar employee.
Only 30 minutes after the last call made by Emelyanov, the Russian soldier Isakov makes a first private call with that same number to Russia. The three defendants used up to thirty Ukrainian SIM cards those days and they used the engineer’s card in several terminals, according to the investigations. The agents consulted do not give details of the testimony given by the witness whom this newspaper has located, but they acknowledge that he has offered “very important” data.
The body is abandoned on the shoulder of a road next to the train track and in front of some buildings taken over by Kremlin troops right on the border of Bucha and Gostómel. Dozens of people pass through that point, used as an evacuation route, on successive days starting on March 9 —Julia and Polina leave that same day. Some of those neighbors report the presence of the body. The majority of those murdered cannot, however, be collected or buried. . The family is informed of the appearance of the body on the 4th – one day after this newspaper found it – and it is finally lifted on the 7th.
The Volkswagen was used by the Russians on successive days. Finally, it was found in a house that was inhabited by its owners until mid-March and which, since then, became a command post for the occupation troops in the town of Gostómel. It is on that property where he is found destroyed and with numerous bullets after the liberation of the territory.
. We work every day for this,” says one of the investigators consulted. Julia, who has gone to kyiv to give a statement for several hours, is grateful for their work. “I believe that good always defeats evil. I hope that all the executioners responsible for this crime. It is not just a question of personal justice, but of justice for the entire country. For me it is important to know that the truth has been established and that the culprits have been identified,” he claims.
But the widow of Sergey Emelyanov, buried in his native Dnipro region, continues. He has not even been able to tell the whole truth to his daughter Polina at this time. He told him, he details, that his father died after enlisting to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression. “No investigation will bring my husband back or make it easier to accept this loss. I have to live with this pain every day,” she says.
