Written big enough

Bucha, Yablunska Street

Bucha, Kyiv region · 5 March 2022

She rode her bike down Yablunska Street, the fifth of March, the frost still on the ground. Four nails red and one small purple heart, that's how they knew her when she was found.

Iryna Filkina, 52, was shot while riding her bicycle during the Russian occupation of Bucha. Her body lay in the street for weeks. She was identified by her manicure: four red nails and one with a small purple heart. The UN documented dozens of unlawful killings of civilians in Bucha; a 150-metre stretch of Yablunska Street alone saw at least 14 people shot.

• RFE/RL — the woman identified by her manicure
• UN OHCHR — killings of civilians in Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions (Dec 2022)

Andriivka, “going home”

Andriivka, Kyiv region · March 2022

They asked him where he meant to go. He said “home.” That's all. Just “home.”

Oleksiy Cherkovskyi, 31, lived in Andriivka, a village occupied for 34 days. A neighbour told reporters: “The Russians asked him where he was going. He said he was going home. And they took him off somewhere.” He was later found dead.

In the same village, a wounded woman, Liudmyla Kardash, wrote addresses on her hands in marker so that whoever found her would know where to send news of her.

• Meduza — “They weren't fighting soldiers. They were fighting regular people.”

A bike, a bag, a pram, a phone

Nobody here was carrying a gun, a bike, a bag, a pram, a phone.

The UN verified the killings of 441 civilians in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions during the first weeks of occupation in 2022. Most were men. Many were shot in their homes, in their yards or on the street.

• UN OHCHR — thematic report on killings (Dec 2022)

Mariupol, the theatre

Mariupol Drama Theatre · 16 March 2022, about 10:00

So we wrote it on the ground in letters you could see from space: CHILDREN, CHILDREN, white across the square.

Hundreds of civilians were sheltering in the theatre. The word ДЕТИ — Russian for “children” — was painted in huge white letters on the ground in front of and behind the building. Satellite images taken on 14 March show it clearly. Two days later a Russian airstrike destroyed the theatre.

Amnesty International called the strike a clear war crime. The number of dead is disputed: an AP investigation estimated about 600; Amnesty's minimum count was far lower. Across the whole siege of Mariupol, Human Rights Watch estimated at least 8,034 deaths above normal levels, based on cemetery growth seen from satellites.

• AP — investigation of the theatre strike
• Amnesty International — “a clear war crime”
• Human Rights Watch — Mariupol: counting the dead

Vinnytsia, Liza

Vinnytsia · 14 July 2022 · 9:38 → about 10:42

Liza pushed her own pink stroller, four years old, her hands just barely reached. “Where are we going, sweetheart?” “Alla!” She was on her way to learn to speak.

Liza Dmytriieva, 4, had Down syndrome. At 9:38 her mother filmed her pushing her own pink stroller on the way to a speech-therapy class. Asked where they were going, Liza answered “Alla!” About an hour later Russian cruise missiles hit the centre of Vinnytsia. Liza was among at least 27 people killed. Her stroller was found overturned in the street.

• SBS — Liza's story, from her mother's posts
• UN News — strike on Vinnytsia

Kramatorsk, “for the children”

Kramatorsk railway station · 8 April 2022

And on the missile someone painted, neat and white: FOR THE CHILDREN. The same word we had written on the ground.

Thousands of people, mostly women and children, were waiting at the station for evacuation trains. A Tochka-U missile with a cluster warhead hit the crowd. 63 people were killed, including 9 children, and more than 150 wounded. On the remains of the missile, white letters read “ЗА ДЕТЕЙ” — “for the children.”

• Kramatorsk railway station attack — overview with references

Yahidne, the basement calendar

Yahidne, Chernihiv region · March 2022

In a school basement, twenty-seven days, a woman kept a calendar in coal.

Russian soldiers held about 368 villagers, around 70 of them children, in the basement of the village school for 27 days. There was roughly half a square metre per person. At least ten people died. Valentyna Danylova drew a calendar on the wall with a piece of coal and wrote the names of the dead beside it. She said: “If we were to die, other people will learn how much we endured.”

• TIME — the Yahidne basement
• The Irish Times — writing the names of the dead on a wall

Izium, the diary under the cherry tree

Kapytolivka and Izium, Kharkiv region · 2022 · Kramatorsk · 27 June 2023

A poet buried his diary under a cherry tree. “When ours come, give it to them.” They came. He was in grave three-nineteen.

Volodymyr Vakulenko, a writer of children's books, kept a diary under occupation. He buried it under a cherry tree and asked his father to give it to Ukrainian forces when they returned. He was abducted in March 2022. After the area was liberated, his body was found in the mass burial site at Izium, in grave No. 319. Investigators exhumed 447 bodies there.

Writer Victoria Amelina dug up the diary with his father in September 2022 and had it published. Nine months later she was fatally wounded when a Russian missile hit the Ria Pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk; she died on 1 July 2023. In her foreword to his book she had written: “As long as a writer is read, he's alive.”

• PEN America — Victoria Amelina and Volodymyr Vakulenko
• NPR — she saved the diary of a writer killed by Russia
• SBS — 447 bodies exhumed at Izium

Viktoriia

Taganrog pre-trial detention centre, Russia · 2023–2024

A girl of twenty-seven called home from a cell: “Mom, Dad, they promised me I'd be home in September.” She came home without her name.

Viktoriia Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist born in 1996, travelled into occupied territory to report on people who had disappeared there. She was detained by Russian forces and reported missing in August 2023. At the end of August 2024 she was allowed one phone call home: “Dad, Mom, I love you! Get ready to meet me. I was promised that I would be home in September.” She died in Russian custody in September 2024, aged 27.

Her body was returned in February 2025 in a bag labelled “NM SPAS 757”: unidentified male. A consortium of 45 journalists led by Forbidden Stories later reported injuries consistent with torture.

• Forbidden Stories — The Viktoriia Project
• iStories — the investigation in full

It's September now

Kyiv · 24–25 September 2026

This film was finished in the last week of September 2026. On the night of 24 September, a Russian attack damaged a maternity hospital in Kyiv; nobody inside was hurt, and a boy was born in its shelter during the strike. The next morning a drone hit a Kyiv apartment and killed 14-year-old Daniel Umansky. Seven people died in Kyiv that day and 57 were injured.

• Meduza — strike on Kyiv damages maternity hospital (24 Sept 2026)
• UNN — 7 killed, 57 injured in Kyiv (25 Sept 2026)
• LIGA — the 14-year-old killed in Kyiv

Now you've seen it

twenty thousand children taken, seventeen thousand lives.

“Twenty thousand children”: Ukraine's official registry lists 20,651 children, each identified by name, who were deported to Russia or forcibly transferred. In March 2026 the UN Commission of Inquiry found that the deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainian children, and their enforced disappearance, amount to crimes against humanity; 80% of the children in its case sample had not come home.

“Seventeen thousand lives”: the UN has verified at least 16,874 civilians killed from 24 February 2022 to 31 July 2026, and at least 372 more in August 2026. The UN says the real figure is considerably higher.

• Children of War — Ukraine's official registry
• UN News — Commission of Inquiry on deported children (March 2026)
• UN OHCHR — civilian casualties to 31 July 2026

Their names

The outro names nine people. Six appear above. The other three:

Dr Svitlana Lukyanchuk, 30, a doctor at Okhmatdyt, Ukraine's largest children's hospital. When a Russian missile hit it on 8 July 2024, she led children and parents to the shelter and went back to clear more rooms. She was killed in the explosion.

Sofiia Holynska, 6, was killed by a missile in Chernihiv's theatre square on 19 August 2023, the morning she arrived by train with her mother.

Ivan Kozyr, 8, was one of 59 people killed on 5 October 2023 when a missile hit a funeral wake in the village of Hroza. One in six of the village's residents died.

• AP — the strike on Okhmatdyt
• Chernihiv missile strike, August 2023 — overview with references
• Euromaidan Press — Hroza: “our children are gone”