The VIP Tour of Ukraine

The cynical take on the steady procession of foreign dignitaries to Irpin and Bucha, Ukraine, is that it’s a quick drive from Kyiv, and offers a poignant photo op that plays well with voters back home, adding some “war-zone grit” to their resumes.

Seen in a kinder light, the trips to the location of alleged Russian atrocities boost the effort to rout Kremlin forces in Ukraine, site of countless horrors since last year’s February invasion. Shock on visitors’ faces seems to translate directly into pledges to donate more military and other support, and to seek justice for the victims.

“Here in Bucha, we've seen our humanity shattered,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in April 2022, when she was one of the first foreign VIPs to enter the newly liberated town.

Amid frenzied clicking of camera shutters, the German diplomat gasped at the sight of body bags containing some of the 400+ civilians said to have been killed by Russian troops that occupied Bucha from February 27 to March 31, 2022. Many victims were found with their hands tied and showed signs of torture.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Italian and Finnish premiers Georgia Meloni and Sanna Marin, and many other leaders, ambassadors and lawmakers also went to see the destruction unleashed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Even Hollywood actor Sean Penn visited, after entrusting one of his Oscars to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “When you win, bring it back to Malibu,” said Penn, who, along with Zoolander star Ben Stiller was sanctioned by Russia for condemning its actions in Ukraine. (For context, Penn was in Ukraine filming a documentary about Zelensky when the war broke out, updating it later with Russian crimes, and Stiller came as a goodwill ambassador for the UN.)

After a few visits to Ukraine in recent months, this correspondent drove out to the towns that have become synonymous with Russian brutality. And it is precisely their proximity to Kyiv – around 20 kilometers from the city center – that hammers home how close the Kremlin was to victory in those early days.

“If Hostomel had been taken, they’d have been in Kyiv very soon after,” Irpin’s 29-year-old deputy mayor Andrii Kravchuk told Russian Life, referring to the nearby airport Ukrainians managed to hold against the initial Russian assault. The airport was secured entirely by April 2.

The Russian invaders seized Bucha and then entered Irpin, but could only take a third of the latter town before they were finally driven out at the end of March. Irpin lost 39 local defense volunteers, 50 army soldiers, and 300 civilians in those weeks, the latter mainly to shelling, but not all: “The Russians shot dead one 80-year-old man while he was walking on the street,” Kravchuk said.

Around 70 percent of Irpin’s buildings were damaged in the fighting, during which the sides nominally agreed on a window of silence to allow the evacuation of the town’s population of 100,000. “Shooting was forbidden, but the Russians did not respect this,” said Kravchuk, whose claim is backed up by Human Rights Watch, which said that on March 6, 2022, Russian forces bombarded an intersection on a road used by civilians to flee.

Unique in Ukraine for having the status of “Hero City” bestowed on it by President Zelensky, Irpin is a magnet also for foreign media seeking stark images of war and first-hand accounts of battles and sacrifices. Driving past the damaged stadium, we see Mayor Olexandr Markushyn addressing a group of Arab TV journalists.

“We paid a very high price,” he said, also saying that the Russians deliberately fired on civilians. “This shows that Russia is a terrorist state.”

Many apartment blocks and houses are still visibly damaged, while civilian and military vehicle wrecks rust in piles at a few locations. Although used to visitors, locals can be wary of questions, apparently as worried about Russian infiltrators as they are traumatized by the events.

“[The authorities] are concentrating on basic needs like water, electricity and gas, and getting investment in infrastructure,” said resident and security professional Andrii. He thinks it will take 2-3 years to get back to normal daily function, let alone tackle the psychological damage. “No one has even thought yet about PTSD. There are no psychologists available, not for old people or in the schools. It’s just not talked about.”

He estimated that half of the people who left Irpin last year didn’t return and won’t ever, although the administration said more than 75 percent came back. Only half the schools are open, while the rest do distance learning for children whose families left the country. The town is also now home to thousands of internally displaced persons who rely on aid to survive. “Charitable support is drying up,” Andrii said. “If they used to get two meal vouchers a day, it is now one, and then only the neediest people receive them.”

Meanwhile, the suburb’s once thriving real estate market has practically ground to a halt, with unfinished apartment buildings already falling apart, even without any war damage. Overall, the Irpin Investment Council estimates that the town’s restoration to its pre-February 24 condition would require $1 billion.

There are some incongruous sights, including billboard tributes to staunch supporters of Ukraine like US President Joe Biden and former British PM Boris Johnson. The latter, who enjoys near rock-star status in Ukraine for his hard stance towards Russia, visited Bucha in January.

Look closer and you see signs of a deeper impact on local heritage. A Soviet war monument by a bullet-scarred church on a road out of town was surprisingly unscathed. But beneath the snow lay scattered chunks of marble slabs commemorating Soviet soldiers who died freeing Irpin from the Nazis in WWII. By all appearances, they had been smashed apart with a hammer.

This correspondent has spent many years in Russia and Ukraine, and can attest to a residual pride in the two countries’ shared victory over Hitler’s Germany 78 years ago. But since the Donbas conflict began in 2014, all manner of Soviet symbolism has vanished under Ukraine’s 2015 de-Communization laws – even down to threats of confiscating departing travelers’ souvenir badges at airports.

In some places this was extended to WWII memorials. In Odesa, the Order of Lenin sign on the train station was only removed in late summer 2022. With new horrific history now being made, shared events of the past will be in for even harsher revision, as will people-to-people ties. Personally, I had at least one 20-year friendship with a Russian founder because of differences over the current war – or the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, as he sees it.

“I don’t think Russians and Ukrainians can be friends after this – too many people have died,” said Valentina, a resident in her 70s who left her home in the eastern city of Luhansk in 2014 and came to Irpin in 2018. “They say they aren’t fighting civilians, but so many civilians were killed. Russians rob, kill, and destroy – they are barbarians.”

Valentina fled with her daughter and grandchild in 2022 and came back after the Russians left to find that their rented apartment had been looted. “Not that we had many valuables in the first place,” she said.

Her family is now split over the war. While her son fights in the Ukrainian army in the east, she argues on the phone with her grandson, who lives in Russia and is a fan of TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov. Parroting the “Russian Goebbels” – as someone described Solovyov – her grandson insists that Russian missiles only hit military targets and not civilian homes and infrastructure – even though his babushka tells him otherwise.

A few minutes’s drive away, Bucha presents a different, more sinister story. Unlike Irpin, it was swiftly occupied and its population was subjected to random acts of terror and violence by the occupiers. Bucha doesn’t have as much physical damage as Irpin, and, apart from the tangled wreckage of the Epicenter shopping mall, there were few immediate indications of what took place here.

Go to the central Orthodox Church, however, the grounds of which contained a mass grave during the occupation, and you find a grisly exhibition of photos of bodies lying in streets and piles of body bags. It’s a key stop on the VIP route.

A few hundred meters up the street, the municipal administration building is a hive of recruitment for the armed forces. Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk was in Washington, presumably doing his bit for the war effort. Fedoruk said last April that there is no forgiveness for the Russians “on this Earth or in heaven” for what happened. With news emerging since then of more atrocities in Izium, Lyman, Kherson and other towns and cities, it is doubtful he changed his mind.

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry has dismissed claims of atrocities in Bucha as a “fake attack” and a “criminal false flag operation [showing] the alleged killing of civilians by Russian troops.”  Putin went one step further and decorated the Russian unit that Ukraine accuses of the war crimes, praising the 64th Motorized Infantry Brigade for its “mass heroism and valor.”

Few people outside Russia are buying it, along with claims that Russia is the real victim of events.

"If someone has lost their moral compass and cannot see the difference between a victim and an aggressor… I advise you to come here, to Bucha and Kyiv, and look into the eyes of those who survived,” said Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony during a visit in January.

Everyone we spoke with said, when asked about the future course of the war, that the invaders will not be allowed to return. “I don’t think the Russians will try to take Kyiv now, as they got a good punch in the mouth the last time,” said the pensioner Valentina from Luhansk.

“This is our home, we’re not afraid of anything now,” agreed Natasha, an ethnic Moldovan in her fifties who moved to the area 15 years ago, fled to Moldova when the Russians arrived, and came back that June. “They won’t just walk in like last time. Our military is ready for them at the border.”

Irpin’s deputy mayor Kravchuk sent his family away and stayed through the fighting, together with the rest of the local leadership, until he could reclaim his apartment in Bucha after the Russians left.

He found that his home had been looted and that the large Ukrainian flag that had hung from his balcony had been stuffed into a condom and left on the kitchen table. “As a sign of contempt,” he said, guessing about the vandals’ intent.

But he has no doubt in an ultimate Ukrainian victory: “It can’t be any other way.”