“It has become a symbol thanks to the photo of Florent Marcy.” Name one of the thousands of civilians killed in Ukraine. This is precisely what the photographer Florent Marcie wanted to do, by immortalizing the body of the young Oksana, 34, found dead in a cellar in Boutcha. “Shocked” by the “terrible force” of this shot, war photographer Patrick Chauvel traveled to Ukraine to meet with the young woman’s relatives and talk about the person she was in the columns of paris party.
“We wanted to give this woman a name, get her out of this hole, restore her dignity and serve as a symbol for all the other women we don’t talk about,” Patrick Chauvel, a war photographer who returned there to meet with, tells BFMTV.com. the young woman’s family.
In April, the world discovered the war crimes committed in March in Boutcha during the Russian occupation of the city, located in northern Ukraine, not far from Kyiv. 458 bodies were discovered in the city, in one of the first mass graves of the war in particular, according to an August report from the municipality.
An unexplained disappearance
On the spot, the war photographer learns more about Oksana’s career. The young woman had gone to visit her grandmother, who lived in Boutcha, before the Russian attack.
“This mother of a 5-year-old girl had gone to reassure her grandmother before the Russian attack because she thought there would be no attack (…) We don’t know what happened, she disappeared,” says Patrick Chauvel, who affirms that the young woman suffered violence and torture before dying.
With his reporting, while bodies can become “statistics,” he wants victims like Oksana “to become people. All these other women, who are just numbers, are Oksana,” the photographer tells BFMTV.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has counted more than 15,000 civilian casualties in the country, including 6,221 dead and 9,371 injured, according to a report published on October 10th. .
The first report of the International Commission of Inquiry established by the UN on the war in Ukraine, published in September, establishes that war crimes have indeed been committed since the beginning of the conflict. These war crimes include summary executions, torture and sexual violence committed by Russian forces.
Source: BFM TV
