“Tell me it’s not true,” reads the last text message Anastasiia Okhrimenko sent her husband, Yurii. “I’m begging you, tell me you’re alive.” But he was gone. Now she’s among those in Ukraine grappling with the question: After loss, what comes next?
The five had known each other since childhood. They came of age in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb now synonymous with the war’s most horrific atrocities. Their interwoven tales reveal how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exactly one year ago changed their lives, their neighborhood, their country.
The occupation, which lasted 33 days from the start of the invasion on Feb. 24 to April 1, when Russian troops withdrew, became a potent symbol of the war’s horrors. Liberation revealed the mass murder of civilians and cruel accounts of rape. More than 450 people were killed, according to local authorities.
Stirred by the massacre in their hometown, they joined the army in the spring of 2022. No one could afford to fold their arms and watch the war happen, said Vadym.It was her way of telling him he could count on her to wait for him. They had been together for seven years, a relationship sparked the day that Yurii, the boy she had met as a child and known only as her brother’s friend, reappeared in her life with an innocuous greeting on social media.It was a no-frills ceremony.
He returned to the front later. When the shelling ceased for a moment, Yurii made a dash for the car, thinking he had just enough time as the enemy reloaded weapons.It was Vadym, not Yurii, who called Anastasiia that morning. He had bad news from the Military Commissariat. “Yurii’s death pushed us to accept the fact that you can do anything in this life while you are still alive,” Anna says.
On Jan. 13, he called. It was too cold to sleep, he said, quivering. The combat lines were very close; he was 15 meters away from the enemy. He was scared.In long-range battles it’s not easy to see when you’ve killed someone, he explained. He had sent videos of himself from these positions before, shooting toward the faraway enemy lines, crying out: “For Stiahliuk!” — for Yurii. But here, he could clearly see how the bodies of the men he extinguished fell.
He dragged his friend to cover and looked for a pulse. He could swear he felt one, but the medic at the scene said Oleksii died instantly.
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