The next day, March 5, Chechen soldiers arrived at their door, Abramov said. They wore sandy-coloured uniforms and expensive nubuck boots, and carried neater, better kit than regular Russian forces, Abramov said, matching the description of Chechen fighters given by residents north of the town.
The Chechens ordered Abramov, Iryna and Oleh to step outside with their hands raised. One of the soldiers repeatedly asked Iryna where the “Nazis” were hiding, she said, and set their house ablaze. Russian propaganda has described Ukraine’s rulers as Nazi sympathisers, a label Kyiv rejects.
While Iryna was being questioned, other soldiers in the unit ordered her husband to take off his shirt. They brought him, naked from the waist up, out of the property into the cold street outside. Abramov said he heard Oleh asking the soldiers not to harm him.
The soldiers forced Oleh to kneel, Abramov said. Then they shot him in the temple. Blood was still pulsing from the wound when Iryna reached her husband’s body. “Kill me too,” she shouted at the soldiers.
When the Russian forces retreated in late March, Oleh’s body was one of more than a dozen left behind on Yablunska Street. In April, Iryna and her father gave Oleh a funeral and finally buried him in a family plot in Bucha.
theins.ru
