Dmytro Dzhulay is a correspondent for RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.
A new documentary by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service has pieced together the life and death of Oleksiy Pobihay, an obscure shopkeeper whose home was surrounded by armored vehicles and truckloads of Russian troops.
This is the exclusive story of a Ukrainian shopkeeper turned territorial defense volunteer whose body was found, with his hands bound and a bullet wound in his head, at the site of an abandoned Russian headquarters in Bucha.
In fear for his life, Ernest Suleymanov fled Crimea shortly after Russian forces seized the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Now he runs a restaurant in Warsaw, directly opposite the Russian Embassy. "It's like a slap in the face," he says, "Crimea is not theirs."
From her home in Russia-occupied Crimea, Mumine Salieva fights for human rights while also raising four children single-handedly after her husband was imprisoned. The 38-year-old PhD student helps families of people detained since Russian forces seized control of the peninsula 10 years ago.
In early March 2022, as Russian troops approached Kyiv, marines built three pontoon bridges to gain a foothold across the Irpin River. But by blowing up a dam, Ukrainian forces flooded the area -- and pushed back Russian troops who abandoned their armor in the flood waters.
Russian soldiers opened fire on them with a cannon, machine guns, and assault rifles. Twins Yevhen and Bohdan Samodiy and their friend Valentyn Yakymchuk were killed while walking down the street in their home village of Mokhnatyn, in northern Ukraine, on March 14.
When Russian troops entered the village of Stariy Bykiv, they took Viktoria Vovk's son and son-in-law for "questioning," promising to release them later in the day. It was the last time she saw them alive.
A Ukrainian civilian says Russian troops opened fire on his vehicle, killing his father as they were evacuating from the town of Ivankiv in the Kyiv region.
Despite the best efforts of Soviets to suppress evidence of the terrible famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33, a handful of photographers managed to defy the authorities by capturing the horrors of the Holodomor on film.
Sixty years ago, a tsunami of mud officially killed 145 people in Kyiv. But one historian believes many more were buried alive.
