All language subtitles for The Body in the Woods

[ominous sound]

[distant explosions]

Major news.

After days on a razor's edge,

Ukraine is now a nation at war.

This appears to be the worst case scenario

These are Ukrainian territories

which are occupied today,

not by separatists,

but by Russian army.

It's these kind of barrages

that are forcing the Russians to withdraw.

- The liberation of our territories

is significant.

Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged

their troops pulled back.

- They have left their mark.

- Now Ukraine

can begin to recover its dead.

I’m hoping for the best.

Or, at least, to bury my relatives.

I'm Bel Trew,

The Independent’s

International Correspondent,

and in 2022

I was sent to cover

Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In April, after ferocious battles,

Moscow's forces dramatically withdrew

from around the Ukrainian capital.

My team and I went to the areas

that for weeks

have been occupied by Russian soldiers.

Without phone connection or internet,

they had been completely

cut off from the world.

It was the first time

any of us had had access

to these towns and villages.

Well, we're driving towards Bucha

right now.

It's about 25 kilometers

west of the center of Kyiv.

And here,

Ukrainian officials say

at least 300 people have been killed.

[dog barking]

In a kind of daze,

we wandered through

this man-made hellscape,

talking to the few civilians left

who were emerging from their homes.

Russia denied committing any crimes,

but residents spoke of rape, torture

murder and disappearances.

[low car engine]

On our way back

from a day of reporting,

we stumbled upon

an abandoned Russian camp.

You can see behind me,

that there's trenches,

basically a kind of living quarters.

There's also burnt out

armoured cars everywhere

and tanks.

And also unfortunately,

just to the left of me

is the remains of

what the soldiers here say

is a 16-year-old boy.

His hands have been tied behind his back,

his feet have been tied,

and it's clear

that he's been shot in the back.

Over the last decade of covering conflict,

for me the most devastating legacy

of any war

has been the families left behind

without answers.

Those whose loved ones

have been disappeared,

vanished into jails or killed.

Those people who don't know what happened.

Those who lack closure.

Those presumably

like the family of this young man.

How many bodies are there

like his in Ukraine,

lost and unclaimed?

Well, the enemy positions

were located right here.

There are even fortifications

from which they made observation points

and watched the road.

Yeah, this is... this is the camp.

Yeah, this is the exact location.

It's actually quite eerie

to be back here in this Russian camp

over half a year later.

The area is still covered

in belongings of those Russian soldiers,

everything from military rations

to broken ammunition boxes.

The local Ukrainian police say

they still don't know what happened here,

specifically to the Ukrainian civilians

who are clearly held in this area.

And the sad truth is,

is that they may never know.

When our troops advanced

and liberated the territory of Makariv,

there was horror,

there were bodies lying there.

And judging by the condition

of the corpses at that time,

they had been lying there for weeks.

We had taken measures

to document these crimes,

during the active fighting

but we could not do it

in all areas, obviously,

because of the constant shelling.

BEL: As the months went by,

the Ukrainians uncovered more bodies.

But what haunted me

was that young man,

all alone,

murdered and abandoned

in a lonely patch of wood.

As I said before,

we found this body in April.

He appeared to be quite a young man.

He obviously had been executed

because his hands were tied

and he'd been shot in the back.

And we found him very close

to a Russian trench

and we were wondering, like,

did they ever find out

the identity of this body?

Up until now,

the body has not been identified by us.

BEL: Since the young man

was not local to Makariv,

we asked community leaders

in the neighbouring villages

that were also occupied

if they could help us.

So this is exactly where

we found the body.

Can you talk me through

where this person might have come from?

- We were occupied by Russians

from 22 March.

- The next village, Andriivka,

was also occupied.

- There, it was said that up to 40 people

were disappeared and tortured.

Dozens of civilians

vanished by Russian soldiers

were apparently interrogated and tortured

within these walls.

The classrooms and playgrounds

have been turned

into Russian headquarters.

The young man

may have been held here.

Mostly they were taking young guys.

Many people were also taken away,

if they didn't like them,

if they didn't give them something,

or if they found some kind of

military uniform.

All these people were also taken away.

It’s not someone

from our local community.

There’s no one from here

who looks like this body.

BEL: As we're talking

to more and more people in this area,

it's becoming apparent

this is far more complicated

than we ever could have imagined.

There was Russian soldiers

basically moving around prisoners

that they'd taken

from other areas of the country

to this town we're in right now.

There's also the problem

of internally displaced people

who fled

to these kind of rural areas

thinking it might be safer

than the capital

and obviously that wasn't the case.

So it's literally like

trying to find a needle in a haystack.

SIGN: Careful!

Mine clearing works in progress

BEL: One final option

was trying the regional morgue,

which pre-war

was just a tiny rural facility.

It became the collection point

for all the dead

discovered across the Kyiv region.

It’s been there more than a week of time,

but not for a long period.

[voice trails off]

BEL: The forensic doctor

didn't recognize the body.

Found dumped in a wood without any context

the young man

would be near impossible to identify.

At that time,

the teams here were handling

hundreds of bodies and body parts.

When there is turmoil

there are instances

when previously identified bodies

can be mixed up.

Because bags are torn or

documents get wet,

these identified bodies

can change status to unidentified.

There was one case where,

during transportation

and delivery of some bodies,

they were mixed up.

[music playing]

[pen scrawling]

How many unidentified bodies

have you found, basically,

since the beginning of the invasion?

And of those,

how many have been identified?

- We still have more than 2,000...

2,000 and a half, let’s say.

BEL: Yuri says there are 2,500 bodies

which still need to be identified.

Half of them are civilians.

YURI: But we really don’t know

how many unidentified bodies

are on occupied territory.

Unfortunately,

we think that it could be

10 times more than we think.

The scale of invasion

and the scale of atrocities,

and scale of war crimes,

and the severity of these war crimes,

are really, really serious.

BEL: I hadn't appreciated

how huge

or complicated

this problem was.

I went to the

International Commission

on Missing Persons

that have now set up in Kyiv

because they've spent decades

identifying bodies

and documenting war crimes.

MATTHEW: The issue of the missing

isn't only about

the family's right to know

and right to truth

and to be able to bury

their missing relatives.

It's also very much about justice

and criminal accountability.

Ukraine is quite unique

in the sense that

the authorities have actually launched

an investigation

into missing persons cases

while the conflict is ongoing.

I don't think this has been done

anywhere else before previously.

And this raises

a whole load of different challenges.

BEL: Among those challenges

are bodies being lost or mixed up.

As we talked to Matthew,

next door

a Ukrainian teenager called Vladislav

was having his blood taken

for DNA analysis

to try to find his mother.

MATTHEW: Vladislav has been trying to find

the human remains of his mother.

He actually believed

that he had found his missing mother.

The human remains had already been burnt.

He cremated them

and then sought to bury them.

It was actually somebody else

that he'd actually taken for burial.

My mother and stepfather went to Bucha,

around 22 March,

to the village of Hurovshchyna,

to deliver food donations.

And on the morning of 25 March,

they drove back to Kyiv from there.

And somewhere on the Zhytomyr highway,

this event happened.

We lost contact with them completely.

That’s all.

Since then, we cannot find her.

We published an announcement.

- Did you get any responses to it?

No.

I saw there were truckloads of bodies,

and there was no place to keep them.

Maybe something was lost,

something was signed wrong,

something was taken to the wrong place.

The mess was very bad there.

Vladislav only found out

that he had cremated the wrong body

because lawyers at this law firm

called him out of the blue in the summer.

So there was basically a body mix up.

- Yeah, mixed up body.

One of the lawyers

had been looking for a relative

called Ksenya,

who was also killed

by the Russians.

It turns out

the authorities

had mistakenly given Vladislav

Ksenya’s body.

Ksenya and her husband Maksym

had tried to evacuate

with their six-year-old child

and a female friend.

The couple was shot by Russian soldiers

before they could get to safety.

So Maksym’s uncle

is showing us video footage

apparently of the moment

that Maksym was killed,

which is how

this whole investigation was started.

So you can see this drone footage.

BEL: It was just chance

that a Ukrainian surveillance drone

caught this moment.

Maksym and Ksenya

were desperately trying to flee

Russian occupation along this road

to Kyiv,

which had become a major evacuation route.

The couple did not realise

Russian snipers

were stationed

on both sides of this motorway.

Their car comes under fire.

BEL: So this is the shooting,

the moment of the shooting.

- That's the killer.

He's the person that killed him?

- Yes.

That's the boy, that's the son, right?

That's the child of Maksym.

Absolutely frightening.

Ksenya’s son

and another female passenger survive.

They are led away by a Russian soldier.

VOLODYMR: Here we see

the wounded woman with the child

being led to the ditch for execution.

For some reason

they dragged him away from the car.

Ksenya, Maksym’s wife,

is dead in the car.

[somber music]

When we understood that

the young were dead...

It’s a very hard process to find them.

[somber music]

[clothing flutters in wind]

[truck passes slowly in distance]

BEL: The same day

we found the body in the woods,

we met Vadym.

Marooned by the destroyed remains

of his family home,

he was waiting for rescue workers

to pull out the dead.

[bulldozer engine idling]

I hope for the best,

at least to bury my family.

By chance,

Vadym had been standing

outside the block of flats

that morning the Russian warplane arrived.

He was actually on the phone to his mother

the moment the bomb dropped.

Most of his family were killed

in front of his eyes.

The remains were retrieved

by rescue workers,

and since it was such a clear-cut case,

I assumed

it would be easier

for the bodies to be identified.

[picking through broken ceramic]

BEL: The process has been chaotic.

At one point,

Vadym was handed

a bag of four severed arms

to identify.

The case was transferred

between different districts,

and it seems

his initial file was lost.

The bodies were initially taken

to different morgues.

Five morgues,

in different locations.

Then I had to give DNA samples again,

and testified again,

and the case was reopened.

So far, nothing is clear.

No one has been buried.

BEL: It seems

knowing the time, location,

and circumstances

of the killings have not helped.

And this appears to be a problem

across the area.

The first person we meet

by the side of the road

explained how his cousin

was killed in shelling,

but the body is still formally listed

as unidentified.

Holding his cousin's death certificate,

the elderly resident

said he is not a close enough relative

for his DNA to make a positive match.

Two or three days ago,

he appeared in my dreams,

I think about him all the time.

I have already agreed with my priest

that at least some remains

should be buried.

Because my soul cannot

stand it any longer.

If we could have a funeral,

it would be easier.

BEL: It's obviously a logistical nightmare

for the authorities

to have to try and gather

all of these remains of bodies,

DNA tests

from family members

who may be miles away

or not even in the country,

like this case.

But it's still really hard

for the civilians left behind.

This man's saying it's been,

what, six, seven months

since they tried to bury his cousin.

And at the moment

it looks like the cousin

may never be formally identified

and will just be stuck in that limbo

in a morgue.

FRANTIC MAN: Let’s go, let’s go! Drag him!

Faster, faster, faster!

S**t there is one more.

Come on boys! Move! Faster!

Let’s get out of here! Faster!

BEL: It's one of the most dangerous jobs

in the world.

The authorities are overwhelmed

and that means

across the country

volunteers like these people

are risking their lives

to recover the dead and wounded

from the front lines.

At full capacity,

the morgues have to store the dead

in railway carriages,

refrigerated trucks

and shipping containers.

In this facility in northern Ukraine,

the forensic doctors say they are storing

250 bodies alone.

BEL: And the police are discovering

more bodies every day.

Before Russia's invasion in February,

these officers

would have been handling

traffic violations

and petty crimes.

Now they are on the front line

of war crime evidence gathering

and they're trying to reunite people

with their missing loved ones.

We just got to this village here

with the Izium police

which is completely destroyed.

There isn't a single building

that's standing.

We're following them now

at the moment

as they go to pick up

a body that they've found.

And they've told us

we've got to walk

directly behind them

because this whole area

hasn't been properly demined yet

and they're still finding bodies

even weeks after this area

has been liberated.

BEL: The police have told us

that this man

actually died in March.

He was an elderly man

who was disabled

and unable

to get to the basement in time

when shelling happened.

And that just highlights

the problems

of trying to retrieve the dead.

He's been here

lying outside his house

for eight months

and it's only now

in November

that the security forces

were able to retrieve the body

and bring them back

to his loved ones for burial.

[cordon tape flutters in wind]

BEL: In some cases

they're finding hundreds

of unidentified bodies at once.

Every single one of these neatly dug holes

will be months,

if not years of work,

to formally identify the individuals.

To work out what happened to them.

To potentially

document the crimes committed.

The Ukrainian police

have even opened

mobile DNA labs

with portable testing equipment

provided by Western donors.

With this device we will be able

to speed up our work,

we will be able to go to a crime scene

or a mass grave,

set it up, and conduct

rapid DNA analysis on the spot.

And with the help of this machine,

we will be able

to identify the deceased more quickly,

within 24 hours.

BEL: The bodies which produce

no successful DNA matches

are eventually taken from the morgues

and returned to the earth.

They are buried in special numbered graves

until fresh evidence comes to light

and someone comes to claim them.

Perhaps the body in the woods

we’ve been trying to find is here.

We still don't know if he has any family,

if anyone is searching for him,

except for us.

We’ve counted

78 graves in this site here in Bucha

and bar a single one of them

that has a name,

all of them are unidentified and numbered.

And that means that there's families

across Ukraine

who are looking for these people.

I had the immense privilege

of when my mum passed away

of being able to be present

at her bedside when she died

and the immense privilege

of being present at her burial

and the immense privilege of knowing

where that burial site is.

And anyone who's experienced grief

will know that

there's something about

being able to visit at least a place

to pay your respects

and that has a form of closure

which...

is a form of healing.

And I think that's

the biggest tragedy here.

That will be the

legacy of Ukraine.

That will be

the open wound that will never heal,

people who never get that closure

who never know

what happened to their loved ones.

That's...

That's really hard

to get your head around.

[music playing]

[quiet breeze]

BEL: We're driving along

the Zhytomyr Highway right now.

This was once nicknamed

the Highway of Death.

It was the main evacuation point

for people trying to get out.

A lot of people died on this highway.

At the time, they were shot by Russians

or they were killed in shelling.

Among them was

Maksym and Ksenya,

and also, we believe,

Vladislav’s mother.

BEL: So,

Russian soldiers would have been here

observing the roads?

They were shooting

from the other side, mainly?

- Mainly from the other side.

- I think they have the same on the other.

On the other side,

so it's from both, yeah, yeah.

And you wouldn't be able

to see a soldier at all.

It'd be completely and utterly hidden.

You wouldn't have any idea.

Yeah, because they're all over the place.

There's one over there and here as well.

They found the ID of your stepfather here.

They have the car,

but you still haven't been able

to get hold of the body of your mother.

I mean,

why is that?

VLADISLAV: When they were

collecting the bodies,

it was happening in a strange way.

It was obvious no one was saying

who was doing this and how.

According to the investigator,

someone made a big mess.

After months of no news,

the law firm has agreed to help

Vladislav locate his mother's body.

Orphaned and on his own,

the teenager has even moved in

with one of the lawyers,

called Serhiy,

who has taken on his case

and is now taking care of him.

BEL: You have a hedgehog.

Where is the hedgehog from?

- I bought it here, in Kyiv.

He's so cute.

What's the hedgehog's name?

- Yustia.

Yustia?

Stop it.

He's so cute.

He's very cute.

He's quite spiky though.

They called to say everything was fine.

and they were staying overnight

because they did not have time to return.

It was 24 March.

And that was actually

the last conversation I had with her,

that’s all.

WOMAN’S VOICE: How are you doing?

VLADISLAV: Bad habits have appeared.

Until now I have never smoked at all.

Almost never drank alcohol.

Well...

BEL: Serhiy believes

he has found the location

of Vladislav's mother

in one of the numbered graves.

He thinks she's body number 500.

They hope an exhumation will be imminent,

and then in theory

there can be a DNA match.

But Serhiy says the police

are either overwhelmed

and so unable,

or unwilling to help.

SERHIY: Can you imagine that?

They were mixing up corpses.

- Hello?

We agreed last week

that you would inform us

about the photo evidence,

so that we could find Vladislav’s mother.

- I’m telling you, the moment I was asked,

I immediately called and found out.

SERHIY: I’ve got you.

Okay. Let’s move on with the documents.

- As soon as I find the photo evidence

I will let you know.

SERHIY: Good, because the boy

needs to study.

- I talked to him.

You think I don’t want to help him?

I’ve talked to him,

and I understand the situation.

SERHIY: We need to find the boy’s mother.

She’s in the cemetery, and I know where.

- I will find the initial case

and I will request the materials.

That’s what we agreed,

that’s what I explained.

SERHIY: Okay.

Again, I’m sorry to have bothered you.

Goodbye.

- Goodbye.

Swine. Another one.

[low outboard motor]

VADYM: This is where my soul rests.

This is where I calm down a bit.

I distance myself a little from everything

it is a bit easier for me here.

BEL: The authorities have reopened

Vadym's case file,

but despite having the bodies

of his relatives and his DNA,

The investigators are yet

to make a formal match.

When I am home I get depressed.

I started taking pills yesterday.

Antidepressants.

Because it is really difficult.

BEL: Robbed of a proper burial,

Ksenya’s and Maksym's families

have instead built a little memorial

by the side of the road.

It marks the place where they were killed

on the highway,

where that awful moment

was filmed by the drone.

It’s hard. It’s hard for everyone.

How can we live without our children?

BEL: Last time we were here,

you were trying to get a hold

of some photos

of the crime scene

so that you could move forward

with the DNA process.

What happened?

- I submitted a petition,

attorney requests, addressed the director.

We were finally successful.

With this last corpse,

which is unidentified, number 500,

we will be able to do a DNA test.

BEL: What if it's not grave number 500?

What happens next?

- We will keep searching.

And we will keep going

until in the end we find her.

BEL: How are you coping?

How are you dealing with this situation?

- I live in a depressed mood.

I have a problem

to concentrate on some things.

It’s understandable that we

try to find the answers.

We want to find our relatives.

We should have some answers.

BEL: And it's not only

about finding the missing.

Ukraine and its international partners

are building tens of thousands

of potential war crime cases.

The murder of Vladislav’s mother

may end up being part of that.

PHOTIS: It's extremely important

to get everything accurate

from the scene of the excavation.

BEL: That's an immense job to be doing

when the country is still in conflict.

- Exactly.

If there's a break in this continuity,

that's where you lose

all credibility in a court of law.

BEL: How long could this process take?

I mean, are we talking about

Ukraine looking for its missing

and identifying its bodies

for a few years?

- I would count this in, unfortunately,

decades.

This problem will persist.

Hopefully, the Ukrainian authorities

and the international community could

pour all its resources into this

and make that time even less.

That's a hope.

BEL: Despite searching for months,

we weren't able to get any information

about the body in the woods.

BEL: I mean, so far, we've basically,

we've tried the Makariv police.

We've tried the Kyiv City Police

and the regional police.

- And the SBU.

And the SBU intelligence,

and we've tried the Bucha

and Kyiv prosecutor's office.

- Yeah.

And we've gone to the morgue,

and we've spoken to all

the local authorities,

like mayors of the towns.

- Yeah.

And we just...

- We check all the villages around,

we check everything.

Like, I was asking all the people,

maybe they know something,

nobody's giving any answers.

BEL: I guess if we were family,

we would be putting our DNA

into the system

and hoping that

there was some kind of form of match.

But even that, obviously,

as we're seeing with Vladislav and Vadym,

even that is problematic.

- Yeah.

We can see that even the people who have,

you know, who had matches,

they cannot find their [relatives].

BEL: Yeah, even those with matches,

they can't even...

- Yeah.

Okay.

BEL: When we first stumbled upon

this site in April

and decided to dig into

what had happened here,

I don't think we had any idea

just how difficult

it was going to be

to get answers.

VADYM: Almost a year has passed,

and it remained as it was.

BEL: From what we know,

this young man was likely not a local.

We know that the Russians

were trafficking civilians

that they'd arrested in different parts

of the country

through this area.

We know that they were targeting young men

and according to some locals,

they had been forcing young men

to dig trenches

and then executing them.

But for now,

this young man

remains just a body in the woods.

MAN: Today I came to be with them,

as always,

because when I am here,

I feel that this is their

last place on earth.

And I want to meet them here.

BEL: Exploring his story

has opened up a world

that I didn't realise existed,

despite the fact

that I've been covering war

for nearly 10 years.

We met Vladislav, Serhiy, Volodymr.

We learnt the story of Maksym, Ksenya

and of course

we followed Vadym

through the process of this investigation.

And...

For them,

their lives

have been irreparably torn apart

by this war.

And the lack of answers

about what happened to their loved ones

has meant that their lives

are remaining on hold.

VLADISLAV: It’s clear that for some time,

life basically stops.

Until you somehow

put it all together.

BEL: That means that there are families

across the whole of Ukraine

who are looking for the people

buried here.

And I think that's what is the most

devastating part of all of this,

people like Vladislav,

who are desperately trying

to do the most simple act of all,

which is bury their loved ones.

And that's gonna be the cruelest fate here

for civilians in Ukraine,

is that they're not gonna have

the right to do that,

to have the closure,

to be able to put an end to their grief.

Because these people that are buried here,

these souls may never be identified.

[gentle music]

[quiet forest landscape]