A part of the city of Bucha is surrounded by a tall and dense pine forest.
There is a large equipped park which awaits spring after the last snow in March.
Before February 24, 2022, the satellite city an hour's drive from Kiev was presented as an ideal destination for families, young couples, looking for a comfortable lifestyle.
A motto had also been coined to describe the attractiveness of the place in these terms: 'Bucha, life in comfort'.
But today the city is dealing with its deepest wound, exactly one year after the liberation of what is now known to the world as the theater of horror.
And the mayor of Bucha, Anatolii Fadoruk, explains to ANSA the complexity of this moment, as if caught between indelible pain and the natural desire for the future.
“March 31, 2022 was probably the happiest day ever: not only for me, but also for the citizens of Bucha who had stayed in the city during the occupation by Russian forces, when there were just over 3,000 people here ", says the mayor.
"Those who survived torture and violence celebrated a year ago as if they were born again. Because the Russians knowingly killed and tortured civilians, spreading fear: it was genocide. Of course forget, and even more forgive the Russians for what they have done to my city it is impossible. But at the same time our goal is that justice is done".
The mayor then reflects on the need on the one hand to honor and preserve memory and on the other on the need to "write a
Going back to those days, to the liberation, Fadoruk underlines that there are two recurring images in his mind: "Those bodies but also the deserted city. In particular the days that followed the 31st: I looked around and realized that there was no nobody anymore. That's why one of our tasks is to get people to come back".
Getting people back to Bucha to live.
"And that's what we're doing: we're repairing the buildings so they can come back. Residents of all ages, young people as well as the elderly and families who want to grow up here".
A "double feeling", the mayor calls it, the one with which one is forced to live "not only in Bucha but throughout Ukraine. On the one hand, war and all that it entails: loss, killings, torture, destruction. and from
In the last 12 months, the mayor of Bucha has welcomed many foreign delegations to the city: "Giorgia Meloni also came - he underlines -, at first I saw the premier in her, the role in which she arrived, but after the short time she passed here, between the mass graves and the church of Sant'Andrea, I saw the human being and his emotions. Who knows, if he had been a man perhaps it would not have been so visible. But for her it was very evident: she was touched by this story".
Speaking again of reconstruction, "we must pursue the most solid possible economic recovery and modernization, to be opposed to imperialist ambitions, to ensure that those ambitions do not try to cross the border once again", remarked the mayor.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wish they didn't think of this war as somewhere in Ukraine, but that it's a war in Eastern Europe. And if we Ukrainians together with our international partners don't stop them , then they will want to get to Rome, Milan, Lisbon...".
This is the message to Italy, with which Bucha "is already a partner" says the mayor, recalling the twinning with Bergamo.
"But we are ready to do more. But we don't want to 'ask', we want to be partners,
And in a year?
What does it foresee?
“The second anniversary of the liberation,” Fadoruk replies.
Then he explains: "What I want is that on the second anniversary the war can be a memory and finally think about development, modernization, the future of our children, the needs of our elders".
In a word, to normal.
