ロシア占領下の「悪夢」　生き延びたブチャ住民をさいなむ記憶

【ブチャＡＦＰ＝時事】ビタリー・ジボトウスキーさん（５０）のまぶたの裏には、ロシア兵によって頭に白い袋をかぶせられ、銃口を突き付けられながら自宅に連れて来られた人たちの姿が焼き付いている。（写真はウクライナのブチャで、ひつぎを運ぶ車にひつぎのふたを運ぶ男性）
　ウクライナの首都キーウ近郊のブチャにある自宅は、同市を占領したロシア軍の拠点とされた。ジボトウスキーさんはここで娘のナタリアさん（２０）、そして夫を殺された隣人女性と共に監禁され、地獄のような日々を過ごした。
　焼け落ちた自宅の前でＡＦＰの取材に応じたジボトウスキーさんは「ロシア軍が捕虜に何をしているのか、音が聞こえてきて、恐怖で震えていた」と語った。捕虜たちの悲鳴が聞こえる中、「私たちに希望はなかった」という。
　ブチャのヤブルンスカ通り（リンゴの木通り）では少なくとも２０人の遺体が発見され、世界の注目を集めた。遺体は民間人の服を着ており、ロシア軍による戦争犯罪の犠牲者とみられている。
　ロシア軍がウクライナに侵攻を開始した数日後の２月２７日、ジボトウスキーさんの家の庭にごう音を立てて装甲車が侵入してきた。隣接するマンションは砲撃を受け、上層階で火災が発生した。
　それから１週間近くたち、ジボトウスキーさんは自宅をロシア軍に占拠され、ナタリアさんともども地下室に閉じ込められると、許可なく出ようとしたら殺すと告げられた。
　ロシア兵は、ヤブルンスカ通りから徒歩１分の距離にあるこの家で食事をし、眠り、負傷兵を治療し、作戦を立てていた。
　ジボトウスキーさんはひたすら、自分と娘の命を守ることだけを考えた。兵士と話す時はロシア語のみを使い、家族のことや神への信仰を話題にして、人情に訴えようとした。
　しばらくすると、家にはフードをかぶった捕虜が連れ込まれ、尋問や殴打の音、叫び声が聞こえるようになった。こうしたことが少なくとも７回はあったという。

■殺された夫の遺体を捜して
　ジボトウスキーさん親子の運命はやがて、通りの向かいに暮らしていたリュドミラ・キジロワさん（６７）と交差する。
　キジロワさんはＡＦＰに対し、３月４日に夫をロシア兵に殺されたと語った。夫の死により取り乱していたキジロワさんの様子を知ったジボトウスキーさんは、ロシア兵に対し、通りを渡らせて自分の家に来させるよう懇願。キジロワさんはその後、ジボトウスキーさんの家の地下室で数日間過ごした。
　キジロワさんは、夫のワレリー・キジロフさん（７０）と自宅の地下室に避難して生活していた。その日、夫が外に出た直後、銃声が響いた。静寂が続いた後、兵士が「下に誰かいるなら出てこい。手りゅう弾を投げ込むぞ」と叫んだ。
　ロシア兵は姿を見せたキジロワさんに、夫の身に何が起きたのかは教えてくれなかった。地下室に戻され、絶対に出てくるなと命じられた。
　暗くなるのを待ち、懐中電灯を手にこっそり自宅の周りを捜し、夫の遺体を見つけた。「頭を撃たれて倒れていた。血だらけだった」
　夫の遺体は３月９日、ロシア兵によって庭に埋められた。その後、ロシア兵は夫妻の家から略奪したウイスキーをグラスに注いで差し出したが、キジロワさんは受け取らなかった。翌日、ブチャを離れ、夫のいない人生を歩み始めた。
　「夫なしでどうやって立ち直ればいいのか。すべてがゼロからのスタートだ」とキジロワさんは語る。「若ければ、少なくとも何かを立て直そうという希望が持てただろうけれど」

■「数百年後まで記憶」
　ジボトウスキーさん親子も同日、ブチャを脱出した。外出許可を得るため地下室から出た時、台所で恐ろしい光景に出くわした。３人の捕虜が頭に袋をかぶせられてひざまずき、両手を後ろで縛られていた。
　ロシア兵には「親族の家に行くが、また戻ってくる」とうそをついた。なぜかは分からないが、ロシア軍は親子が共に家を離れるのを許可した。戻るという約束を守らなければ、家を爆破すると脅された。
　「こんなこと、神はお許しにならない」とジボトウスキーさん。「私たちが生きているのは、たまたまだ」
　生き残った住民の多くは、ブチャで起きたことの記憶にさいなまれながら生きていくことになる。
　「どんな気持ちかって？ 恐怖、ただそれだけだ」。自宅車庫の窓からヤブルンスカ通りで起きた蛮行を撮影し続けていたビクトル・シャティロさん（６０）は語る。「悪夢。まさに悪夢だ」
　それでも命懸けで撮影を続けたのは「子どもや孫たちに、テレビを通じてではなく現実として、起きたことを知ってもらえるように」との思いからだった。「すでに大勢がそれを目にした。数百年後まで記憶に残るだろう」【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2022/05/11-09:43）

When Vitaliy Zhyvotovskyi closes his eyes, he sees captives wearing white bags over their heads just like the people that Russian troops led into his house at gunpoint.
His home in the town of Bucha, now synonymous with accusations of war crimes, became the base for some of Moscow's soldiers and a hellish prison for him, his daughter and a neighbour whose husband was killed.
We were trembling not because of the cold, but due to fear because we could hear what the Russians did to the captives, he told AFP standing in front of his burned home.
We had no hope, he said, recalling the sound of the victims' screams.
Their city drew worldwide attention after the discovery of at least 20 bodies in civilian clothes on a stretch of its Yablunska (Apple Tree) Street.
Many more locals survived, however, and what they witnessed and lived through will haunt them forever.
What can you feel? Just horror, said Viktor Shatylo, 60, who documented the violence from his garage window in pictures. It's a nightmare, simply a nightmare.
Before Russian troops captured Bucha, days into their invasion of Ukraine, it was a small but steadily growing town near Kyiv's north-western edge that became a key prize on the way to the capital.
Days into the attack, a Russian armoured vehicle roared into Zhyvotovskyi's yard on February 27 and began shelling a neighbouring apartment building, where fire subsequently ripped through its upper floors.
It was nearly a week later though that troops took control of his home and confined him and his daughter Natalia, 20, to the basement with a warning that they would be killed if they tried to leave without permission.
- 'I'll throw a grenade in' -
The soldiers ate, slept and ran a field hospital as well as an operations centre in the home built by Zhyvotovskyi's family, and which sits a minute's walk from Yablunska.
His sole focus was keeping him and his daughter alive, so the 50-year-old did things like speaking only Russian to the troops and talking about his family and belief in God to humanise himself.
It was not long before he saw the soldiers leading a hooded captive into the house, a scene he said he heard or saw on at least seven occasions ?- followed by interrogations, beatings and screaming.
Traces of the occupation are everywhere in his destroyed home: Russian ration packs, a camouflage-covered combat manual and a small wooden bat with MORAL scrawled on it in Russian.
About midway through their ordeal, the Zhyvotovskyis' trauma intersected with that of their neighbour across the street, Lyudmyla Kizilova, 67.
Russian troops shot her husband dead on March 4 and she was left alone in her house, she told AFP.
She came to stay for several days in Zhyvotovskyi's basement after he urged the Russians to allow her safe passage across the street, while she was still dazed from a killing that she heard take place.
It happened when her husband, Valerii Kizilov, 70, emerged from their cellar where they had taken shelter. She heard shooting, then silence and an order shouted to her.
If there is someone down there, come out or I'll throw a grenade in, she said, recalling the soldier's words.
- Search for slain husband -
She showed herself, but Russian troops refused to say what happened to her husband, and instead sent her back into the cellar with strict instructions not to come out ?- an impossibility while her spouse was missing.
Kizilova waited until dark and then crept around her property with a light until she located his body: He was laying there shot in the head, there was a lot of blood. But I found him.
It was Russian soldiers who buried the body in her garden on March 9, and after it was done, they poured some of the whisky they had looted from her house into one of her glasses and offered it to her ?- she refused.
The next day she evacuated the area and plunged into a new life without her husband.
I don't know how I will recover without him. Everything starts now from zero, she said. If I was young, there would at least be hope to rebuild something.
Zhyvotovskyi and his daughter escaped the same day, but only after lying to the Russians by saying they were going to another family member's house but would be back.
When Zhyvotovskyi went upstairs to get approval he stumbled onto a horrific sight in his own kitchen -? three prisoners on their knees with bags over their heads, hands tied behind their backs.
- Never forget -
When he allowed AFP to visit his home, which was heavily damaged in a fire that started sometime after he left, there was what appeared to be a dried layer of blood in the same spot on the floor where the captives had kneeled.
For some reason the Russian troops allowed him and his daughter to leave together on the promise they return, with the threat the house would be blown up if they didn't keep their word.
God forbid someone experience something like this, Zhyvotovskyi said. We are alive just by chance.
For survivors across Ukraine like Zhyvotovskyi and Kizilova, the war trauma they suffered will manifest itself in personal ways and may not come immediately.
Some people already have post-traumatic syndrome, and some others are still at the stage when they will feel it later, said Alyona Kryvulyak, a coordinator with the Ukrainian branch of La Strada, a women's rights organisation.
But each of us will be traumatised by the war in our own way, she added.
Yet for Shatylo, the Yablunska street local who filmed the violence on his road, remembering what happened is perhaps the most important thing.
He risked his life to take photos so children and grandchildren can see what was happening, so that they know not from television, but in real life.
But many have already seen it and I think they will remember it for hundreds of years.