- A British paramedic told inews he was one of the first people to enter Bucha after it the Russian occupation.
- He describes dead bodies hanging from trees and booby-trapped corpses.
- This article contains disturbing imagery.
One of the first people to enter the Ukrainian town of Bucha after the Russian army retreated has described the horrendous scenes he witnessed.
British paramedic Mark Brown spoke to inews and painted a terrifying picture of what he came across as one of the first people to arrive in the destroyed towns of Bucha and Irpin after the Russian invasion was driven back from the outskirts of Kyiv by Ukrainian forces.
When he arrived in the country, he expected to provide medical care, help build field hospitals, and train Ukrainian forces. In reality, he had to cut down bodies hanging from trees, clear dead bodies, and walk through streets lined with “rotting” bodies that had their “hands tied” and were “booby-trapped,” he told inews.
The photos from Bucha show some of the scenes that Brown describes, including mass graves, but he said they don’t even touch the sides.
“I don’t even want to talk about it after the shit we’ve seen. It was awful. Let’s put it this way; I’ve seen some of the photos the press has put out – if you think that’s bad, times that probably by ten. And then times it again,” he told inews.
On Friday, the European Union named and blacklisted a Russian military commander describing him as a “butcher” of Bucha, per al-Jazeera. Colonel Azatbek Omurbekov of the 64th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade led Russian troops as they “killed, raped and tortured civilians in Bucha,” alleged the EU.
Approximately 1,000 bodies have been recovered from Bucha, including 31 children, according to Ukrainian authorities, the BBC reported.
He explained to inews how he’s still on the frontline over three months later, having headed initially to Ukraine to spend a week delivering aid.
Now, for Brown, being woken up by tank fire is normality.
“I don’t give a fuck anymore. I just go back to bed. I’ll get back into my sleeping bag with my helmet and body armor on. It’s just become normality now,” the Londoner told inews.
He described the challenging conditions of trying to save lives as battle rages.
When there’s a report of a casualty, “nine out 10 times” someone will be under attack, meaning they have to “literally grab the patient, throw him on the back of a 4X4, and then I’ll do everything on the way to the hospital,” he told inews.
Brown told inews that his original team had 20 people, but only two remain.
He says that he believes “everyone in the UK has forgotten about this.”
Inews reports that the paramedic has gone to Ukraine under a program organized by Dr. Alexy Titievsky, a Ukrainian-born doctor based in Northampton, England, who was previously a doctor in the Ukrainian military.
Titievsky told the outlet “I’m trying now to bring the level of field medicine in Ukraine to the level of the western standard.”
