Just days after Russian troops retreated from the suburbs surrounding Kyiv, Yuriy Savchuk, director of a World War II museum in the city, joined the police and prosecutors who were investigating the full extent of the suffering inflicted there by enemy soldiers.
Over the next month, Savchuk and his colleagues meticulously documented what they saw, taking more than 3,000 photographs. And they came away with some of the abandoned traces of the Russian invasion: the diary of a commander; a book that Russian troops had carried, called "No One Judges the Winners”; a parachute soldier’s map showing targets on Kyiv’s left bank; and the ATM cards and passports of dead Russian fighters.
Those discoveries and many others have become items in an exhibition called "Crucified Ukraine” that opened May 8 at Savchuk’s museum, an unusual effort to chronicle the war even as battles continue to rage in Ukraine’s east and south. A new museum dedicated solely to the Russian invasion is foreseen once the conflict ends, Savchuk added.
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