By SAMYA KULLAB Associated Press
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BUCHA, Ukraine — In the cemetery where Oleksii Zavadskyi and Yurii Stiahliuk are buried, the women they loved take drags on the men’s favorite brands of cigarettes. Clouds of smoke are exhaled in silence.

Interlaced between Anastasiia Okhrimenko’s dainty fingers are Camels. Anna Korostenska lights L&M’s, her hands shaking in the cold. An intimate ritual when the men were still alive — at the end of the day, when it was just the two of them — it is now a somber tradition carried on after death.

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Oleksii and Yurii were killed on Ukraine’s eastern front five months apart. One was Vadym Okhrimenko’s best friend and died in his arms. “Gone, in an instant,” he says, briskly packing his combat uniform and gear. Soon he returns to the battlefield, heavy with sorrow, hungry for revenge.

The five had known each other since childhood. They came of age in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb now synonymous with the war’s most horrific atrocities. Their interwoven tales reveal how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost one year ago changed their lives, their neighborhood, their country.

“This war is not just about soldiers,” says Anna. “It’s about everyone connected to them, and their pain.”

With each passing month, sedimentary layers of grief formed: violent occupations followed by tearful separations and interminable waiting. Between chaotic front lines where victory turned to attrition and homes assailed with constant air raids and power cuts, love blossomed, friendships deepened and the fear of death burrowed in.

As the conflict that killed their loved ones rages on, Anna, Anastasiia and her brother, Vadym, wrestle with a question that all of war-torn Ukraine must grapple with: After loss, what comes next?

HISTORY UNFOLDING

In Bucha, familiar childhood landmarks are imbued with a new, dark history.

There is the building behind the playground where dozens took shelter from the approaching Russian troops; the garages where Russian soldiers burned to death those sheltering inside; the supermarket, from where the funeral processions now start.

The occupation, which lasted 33 days from the start of the invasion on Feb. 24 to April 1, when Russian troops withdrew, became a potent symbol of the war’s horrors. Liberation revealed the mass murder of civilians and cruel accounts of rape. More than 450 people were killed, according to local authorities.

Anastasiia fled the area for another. Anna remained in Bucha until March 10. She spent nights in the shelter as Russian tanks rolled past her neighborhood of Sklozavod, soldiers ransacked shops and ran over a man sitting in a car. All this, she witnessed.

“We are still processing,” says Andrii Holovyn, 50, the community’s priest, who presided over Yurii’s funeral and those of countless other soldiers after him. “People are living in constant danger, without light, with no breaks in between.”

The occupation propelled the childhood friends to act. Oleksii’s mother and sister escaped to Germany. Vadym’s wife fled to the Czech Republic. Yurii asked Anastasiia to leave her job and stay at home.

They were very different, the three men. Yurii had an aura of eternal youth, the kind of guy who smiled broadly even when enraged. Oleksii was a brawler, a rebel on the outside but intensely introverted. Vadym, a terse, self-described “football hooligan,” was their leader.

Stirred by the massacre in their hometown, they joined the army in the spring of 2022. No one could afford to fold their arms and watch the war happen, said Vadym.

LIVING CALL TO CALL

This was the moment Anastasiia chose to propose marriage to Yurii.

It was her way of telling him he could count on her to wait for him. They had been together for seven years, a relationship sparked the day that Yurii, the boy she had met as a child and known only as her brother’s friend, reappeared in her life with an innocuous greeting on social media.

“I realized that he was the only person with whom I could imagine my future,” she says.

It was a no-frills ceremony. Papers were signed, rings exchanged. But future plans were elaborate. “First, we had to win this war,” Anastasiia says, twirling her wedding band around her finger. “Probably the first thing we would do after is go on a honeymoon.”

Yurii arrived in the eastern city of Kramatorsk in July, heading toward the salt-mining town of Bakhmut, which would turn out to be the focus of the war’s longest battle. Says Anastasiia: “I lived from call to call.”

Through him, she bore witness to the hellscape that was the war.

Russia had shifted tactics, withdrawing troops from the north after fierce Ukrainian resistance.