Suspicion haunts grieving Ukrainian village
Ukraine: Sitting on a bench outside his house, Volodymyr Mukhovaty cursed the informants who are suspected of helping Russia strike his village, killing 59 people including his wife, son and daughter-in-law.
Authorities in Groza, a village in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, say two of their own — brothers Volodymyr and Dmytro Mamon — gave Moscow coordinates for the devastating missile strike last October.
Targeting a local soldier’s wake, it was one of the deadliest single attacks of the two-year war.
“They were our neighbours... my oldest son went to school with one of them, they were basically inseparable,” Mukhovaty said of the pair.
Looking at the sky with tears in his blue eyes, he raged: “How many people did you send to the grave? What for? You goddamned idiots!”
Six months after the strike, the air around Groza was heavy with grief, distrust and suspicion towards residents deemed pro-Russian.
The divided community shows the challenges facing places liberated after months of Russian occupation.
Groza was captured by Russia in the first days of the war, before Kyiv’s forces retook control in September 2022.
It is unlikely the accused brothers will face justice in Ukraine.
They fled to Russia, where they built a “network of informants,” according to Kyiv’s security service.
The few cars that entered Groza drove past a bus stop displaying a banner with Volodymyr Mamon’s portrait.
“The murderers have names — killed 59 fellow villagers for Russian money,” it read.
‘Whole family is dead’
Just after the bus stop at the village cemetery, there were dozens of freshly-decorated tombs.
All bore the same date of death — 05.10.2023, the day of the strike.
Forty-four of the 59 killed were residents of Groza village, from a population of around 330 according to local authorities.
They were gathering in a cafe on the main street for the reburial of a local soldier who had died earlier in the war when a missile tore through the building, reducing it to a pile of rubble and severed body parts.
A Russian official said it was a legitimate military target — a claim rejected by a United Nations report.
A memorial will be built over the cafe’s barely-visible foundations.
The adjacent children’s playground will remain, its half-destroyed swings swaying silently in the breeze.
Among the dead was eightyear-old Ivan, the grandson of Valentyna Kozyr, who also lost her husband Anatoly, her son Igor, and her daughter Olga.
Valentyna is also the aunt of the soldier reburied that day.
“The whole family is dead. There is no one left, only me and my (second) grandson.”
‘Need to be killed’
Kozyr was back in town to pick up documents from her house, whose living room has been turned into a shrine.
She told AFP she rarely returned, with the village too heavy with memories.
“I cry, I garden. It was my daughter who used to garden. Now, see, flowers are already coming out.”
Kozyr resented the families she said were pro-Russian, who stayed in Groza after it was liberated by Ukraine.
They would turn against their own again if Moscow’s forces — just 35 kilometres (20 miles) away — recaptured the village, she warned.
“They have a Ukrainian flag in their room. If something goes wrong, they will tear it off and burn it on the pyre.”
One couple in the village who are widely accused of being Russian sympathisers told AFP they supported Ukraine.
But suspicion and distrust run high in the village, sliced apart by grief.
Sitting outside her grocery store — the only one still open — 40-year-old Olga Dontsova also believes some of her neighbours would switch allegiance again.
She compared the situation to a scene in cult Soviet film “Wedding in Malinovka”, where the main character changes hats as his village repeatedly switches sides.
“Some directly told you: ‘I’ll sit here and be waiting for Russia to come back,’” one of
Dontsova’s customers said.
‘Heavy on the soul’
On a sunny spring day, the village was mostly silent apart from birds singing and a few stopping by the shop, screeching car tyres over the dry earth.
It hadn’t always been that way.
Villagers used to gather on weekends, Dontsova remembered.
“Some of us would make a fire, cook porridge, fry sausages, play ball games,” she said. “But now we don’t have anything like this. Everyone just sits in their own homes.”
Local gatherings bring back too many painful memories.
“When we come together, we start to remember everyone who is dead. After this, it all starts to weigh even more heavily on the soul,” said Dontsova, who lost many close ones in the strike, including her best friend, Alina.
The village was hardly moving on, she said.
From his porch decorated with an Orthodox icon, Mukhovaty still couldn’t believe his wife of 47 years, Tanya, was gone.
“At night, I hear my wife starting to call me: ‘Vova, Vova,’” he said.
“I wake up and immediately start running around the house, thinking maybe she came back. But no, she’s not there.”