Video summary of the war Ukraine - Russia: May 16 19:14
Dovzhyk, Ukraine (CNN) --
Mykola Kulichenko is struggling to tell a story he shouldn't be alive to tell.
But this Ukrainian man believes that he was allowed to cheat death so that he could speak for all those who cannot.
On the side of a remote road in the northern Chernihiv region of Ukraine, Mykola shows the unmarked grave in which he and his two brothers were buried three and a half weeks after the war began, on land occupied by Russian forces. .
All three had been shot;
he was the only one who survived.
"It's like resuscitation," Kulichenko, 33, told CNN.
Until March 18, life for the Kulichenko family had changed little despite the fact that the Russians had occupied their village of Dovzhyk since the beginning of the war.
Then, when a Russian column was shelled, Russian soldiers fanned out looking for those responsible.
They arrived at the wooden plank house where Mykola lived with his two brothers, Yevhen and Dmytro, along with his sister, Iryna, who still hasn't forgiven herself for not being home that day.
Three soldiers told the brothers to kneel in the front yard while they searched the house for anything linking them to the bombed convoy, Mykola said.
According to him, once they found the military medals owned by his grandfather and a military bag belonging to Yevhen, 30, who had been a paratrooper, the soldiers were convinced they had something to hide.
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Mykola, Yevhen and Dmytro were taken to a basement where they were interrogated for three days, he said.
Mykola kept waiting for the Russians to release them, but on the fourth day, he said, his mood changed.
"They beat me all over my body with a metal rod and put the barrel of a gun in my mouth," he said.
Along with his brothers, Mykola was tortured until he lost consciousness.
He says they were blindfolded, their hands and legs tied with duct tape, and five Russian soldiers drove them in a military vehicle into a desolate field.
They were forced to kneel, blindfolded, while a well was dug, Mykola said.
First, he said, he heard a gunshot behind him, and Dmytro, 36, the oldest of the three, fell to the ground.
Then he felt Yevhen, the youngest, fall beside him.
"I was thinking I was next," he said.
But the bullet entered his cheek and exited by his right ear.
He knew that his only hope of survival was to play dead.
The soldiers kicked the brothers' bodies into the pit, covered them with dirt and left, according to Mykola.
He can't say how long he was buried alive, but with his hands and legs still bound, he somehow managed to get out from under the corpse of his older brother and return to the land of the living.
"I was having a hard time breathing, as Dima (Dmytro) was lying on top of me, but using my arms and knees, I was able to push my older brother to the side of the pit, and then I got out."
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This is how Mykola Kulichenko survived
In the dark, he staggered across the fields to the nearest house, where a woman took him in and nursed him overnight before he could return to his sister, who had been waiting anxiously for days at their father's house.
“I got home and there was Mykola.
I looked him in the eye and asked him where the others were.
He said there was no more, ”recalls Iryna between sobs.
Mykola says that it is a miracle that he survived.
The scars on his cheek and behind her ear are still visible today.
"I was lucky... and now I have to go on living," he said.
"This story needs to be heard by everyone, not just in Ukraine, but all over the world because this kind of thing is happening and this is only one in a billion."
Ukraine investigates Russian war crimes
The Chernihiv region prosecutor's office has opened an investigation for war crimes.
Investigators confirmed to CNN that the brothers had their hands and legs tied and were blindfolded.
Across Ukraine, more than 11,600 suspected war crimes have been recorded so far, according to local authorities.
CNN also contacted the Russian Defense Ministry, but received no response.
As with so many other alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces, the story of Mykola and her brothers could only be told once the Russian withdrawal from the Chernihiv region began in early April.
It was also only then that Mykola was able to begin searching for the well from which, against all odds, he had escaped with his life.
He knew that he had to find his brothers to give them the proper burial they deserved.
On April 21, exactly one month after Mykola says his brothers were executed, Dmytro and Yevhen were finally laid to rest under elaborate headstones in a well-kept grave, on land that was once again in Ukrainian hands.
war in ukraine