Untitled 3 - Natalie Keyssar

April 4, 2022. Bucha, Ukraine. Gala and her daughter Veronika hid at home throughout the occupation. “Gala, with the blue hair, said that the soldiers would come into her home twice a day threatening to kill them and terrorizing the neighbourhood,” says the photographer, Natalie Keyssar. 

“After a month of occupation by Russian invaders, during which time civilians were subjected to murder, torture and rape by the occupiers as well as terrorizing shelling and constant fighting, loss of electricity, water and access to food, residents of Irpin and Bucha, suburbs of Kyiv, picked through the rubble as soldiers and paramedics cleaned up explosives and bodies,” Keyssar says. “With the Russian forces gone, evidence of probable war crimes emerged, including the discovery of many bodies of civilians who appeared to have been executed and left on the streets, in private homes, and in mass graves.”