BURNED MAN — Three Russians steal a Ukrainian’s truckdriver/farmer and then burn him alive, but the Ukrainian does the unexpected and survives. It’s wild justice and an act of visceral revenge.
The setting is Mariupol the location of Russia’s most heinous war crimes.
Mariupol has been returned to Ukrainian control.
A war crimes investigator arrives in the newly liberated Southeast Ukrainian town of Mariupol. He goes into the local bar called “The Burned Man” pub for a beer, and tells the Ukrainian bartender that the town has an unusual number of complaints about a “burned man” and “other potential war crimes.”
The investigator observes a journalistic photo of a man whose face is partially disfigured from horrible burns. The investigator is then told of the events from the occupation. There was an epic fight involving a Ukrainian farmer named Alec Tomenko and the night the local residents still call “the Reprisal” or “The Night of the Burned Man” (Спалена людина) their name for Alec.
BURNED MAN – SUMMARY
Alec Tomenko falls in love with the beautiful Galina, a wealthy girl out of his humble class. Against the wishes of her snobbish aunt, she marries him, later faking a pregnancy to win her aunt’s consent. But Alec tires of living off of his wife’s family, and eventually deserts her to become a farmer/truck driver. 11 years later, with his self-made fortune (millions), he sets out to return home, only to be set upon by two Russians (a drunk army general and a sadistic hustler), for some reason in the company of a banker who manages to save Alec’s life but steals his money. Severely beaten and branded, Alec is left for dead. Rescued by a doctor who nurses him back to health, Alec becomes consumed by the desire for revenge. As fate would have it, all three men live close to Alec’s former home. Matters quickly get worse when Alec reunites with his wife, only to discover that she is now engaged to the banker, one of the men upon whom Alec now seeks vengeance.
Burned Man – Bucha – Russian Atrocities
After Russian forces withdrew from Bucha north of Kyiv, at the end of March, videos emerged showing at least nine apparently dead bodies lying in the street in the residential area of the town. Journalists who visited the area reported seeing at least twenty corpses in civilian clothing. On 1 April, AFP reported that at least twenty bodies of civilians lay in the streets of Bucha, with at least one the bodies having tied hands. The mayor of the city, Anatolu Fedoruk, said that these individuals had all been shot in the back of the head. Fedoruk also said that around 270 or 280 individuals from the city had to be buried in mass graves. In Vorzel, west of Bucha, Russian soldiers killed a woman and her 14-year-old child after throwing smoke grenades into the basement in which they were hiding. On 15 April, local police reported more than 350 bodies found in Bucha following the withdrawal of Russian forces and said most died of gunshot wounds.
Video footage from a drone verified by The New York Times showed two Russian armoured vehicles firing at a civilian walking with a bicycle. A separate video, filmed after the Russian withdrawal, showed a dead person wearing civilian clothing matching the drone footage, lying next to a bicycle. The Economist reported an account of a survivor of a mass execution. After getting trapped at a checkpoint when it came under fire from Russian artillery, the man was captured by Russian soldiers, along with the construction workers he was sheltering with at the checkpoint. The soldiers moved them to a nearby building being used as a Russian base, strip-searched them, beat and tortured them, then took them to the side of the building to shoot and kill them. The man was shot in the side, but survived by playing dead and later fleeing to a nearby home. BBC News also reported that bodies of civilians found in a local temple had their hands and legs tied and that some were also crushed by a tank.
Footage released by the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces appeared to show 18 mutilated bodies of murdered men, women and children in a summer camp basement in Zabuchchya, a village in the Bucha district. One of the Ukrainian soldiers interviewed stated there was evidence of torture: some had their ears cut off, others had teeth pulled out. The bodies had been removed a day before the interview and Corpses of other killed civilians were left in the road, according to him. A report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, an American state-funded media organization, described the basement as an “execution cellar” used by Russian forces.
According to residents of Bucha, upon entering the town, Russian tanks and military vehicles drove down the streets shooting randomly at house windows. The New York Times reported that during the Russian occupation snipers set up in high rise buildings and shot at anyone that moved. A witness told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the Russians “were killing people systematically. I personally heard how one sniper was boasting that he ‘offed’ two people he saw in apartment windows… There was no need. There was no military justification to kill. It was just torturing civilians. On other blocks, people were really tortured. They were found with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the back of the head.” Locals asserted the killings were deliberate and many reported that in several instances snipers would gun down civilians for no clear reason. HRW heard reports that civilians were fired upon when leaving their homes for food and water, and would be ordered back into their homes by Russian troops, despite a lack of basic necessities such as water and heat due to the destruction of local infrastructure, they also accused Russian troops of shooting indiscriminately at buildings and refusing medical aid to injured civilians.
According to a Kyiv resident who was present at the Bucha headquarters of the territorial defence force, Russian soldiers checked documents and killed those who had participated in the War in Donbas. He said that Russian troops killed people with tattoos associated with right-wing groups, but also those with tattoos of Ukrainian symbols. According to his account, in the last week of the occupation, Kadyrovite Chechen fighters were shooting at every civilian they encountered. Another resident reported that Russian soldiers checked the cell phones of civilians for evidence of “anti-Russian activity” before taking them away or shooting them.
On 5 April, Associated Press journalists saw charred bodies on a residential street near a playground in Bucha, including one with a bullet hole in the skull, and a burned body of a child. The journalists were unable to verify their identity or the circumstances that led to their death On the same date, The Washington Post reported that Ukrainian investigators found evidence of beheading, mutilation and incinerations of corpses found in the town. On the next day, they also reported that three other corpses, one beheaded, were found inside a glass factory, according to the investigators, the bodies of at least one of those killed were turned into a trap and mined with tripwires. On 21 April Human Rights Watch reported they had found “extensive evidence of summary executions, other unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, and torture” in Bucha. The human rights organisation documented the details of 16 apparently unlawful killings including nine summary executions and seven indiscriminate killings of civilians. On 27 April, Michelle Bachelet, Head of OHCHR, reported that the Monitoring Mission in Ukraine had documented the unlawful killing of 50 civilians – mostly men, but also women and children – in Bucha.
While Ukrainian officials called the situation “genocide”, “a massacre” and “war crimes”, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that some of the footage was fake and accused Ukrainian troops of killing people by shelling the town. Numerous other countries demanded investigations and accountability, with UK prime minister Boris Johnson stating the footage in Bucha was “yet more evidence that Putin and his army are committing war crimes”. Several nations such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Spain have called for the prosecution and punishment of Russia troops for reported atrocities in the invasion. On 4 April, US president Joe Biden called Putin “a war criminal”. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the United Kingdom would use its resources to bring Putin to justice for atrocities being uncovered in Bucha.
Amnesty International stated that the killings near Bucha constituted “extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, which must be investigated as likely war crimes”. Agnès Callamard, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, added that “Testimonies show that unarmed civilians in Ukraine are being killed in their homes and streets in acts of unspeakable cruelty and shocking brutality”.
On 19 May, New York Times released videos showing Russian soldiers leading away a group of civilians, then forcing them to the ground. The dead bodies of the men were later recorded by a drone on the spot where the video was recorded and the bodies were later found after Bucha’s liberation. The videos clearly show the murdered men in Russian custody minutes before their execution and confirm eyewitness accounts. The troops responsible for the murders were Russian paratroopers.
On 8 August the local authorities completed the counting of victims and reported that 458 bodies had been recovered from the town, including 9 children under the age of 18; 419 people had been killed by weapons and 39 appeared to have died of natural causes, possibly related to the occupation.