In May 2022, I met Natalya, a mother mourning her son, who is buried at a cemetery in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv. In the weeks prior, hundreds of bodies were exhumed in the area surrounding Bucha. Her son Alexander, 40, was killed as he tried to rescue her while Russian troops entered the city as she hid in an underground shelter. Two weeks after coming out of hiding, Alexander’s wife informed her mother-in-law about her son’s fate. She said, ”when volunteers found him, he showed signs of torture and had a gunshot wound to the back of the head.” She is one of the many individuals I met with similarly horrific stories. This is my testimony documenting this senseless tragedy’s incalculable costs. The project’s title is my take on the original poem ”Testament” by Taras Shevchenko, whose literary works are considered to be the basis of modern Ukrainian literature and the modern Ukrainian language. ”When I die, then make my grave, High on an ancient mound, In my own beloved Ukraine,” Taras Shevchenko. Welcome to ‘UKRAINE Testament’
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