I have the world’s most dangerous job – Putin wants me dead and that’s just the half of it | World | News

While the armored passes through the Ukrainian countryside in 4×4, Kharkiv Police Chief Serhii Bolvinov takes off his phone to show the videos of a new hobby used to relax between Russian war crime investigations.

“Unfortunately, when I spend a free day that is not very often, I pull my sniper rifle, go to a long -distance interval, and I shoot, or he says, it points to a slow -gratified video while flowing into the air throughout the scope. “The longest distance I have hit the target is 1.8 km,” he adds with a smile.

For a man involving interviews with the victims of torture and carefully chronicization of children, it may seem unusual way to quit gravity.

But for those living in a war zone, even the game tends to have a practical advantage, especially if you want to die personally by the Vladimir Putin regime, especially Serhii.

Since the full -scale invasion of 2022, Russian bombs destroyed more than one Kharkiv police station and targeted the local evidence. An order for the arrest of Serhii was published by a occupied region. There are 1,000 people working for him, and most of his colleagues are killed on the task line. And 42 -year -old Serhii, I came to the front to watch his business as he continued to put himself on the line of fire by gathering evidence of Russian war crimes.

“They published my personal mobile phone number, my family and where I lived,” he says, as he slowed down for a military control point with the car’s sandbags and soldiers.

“I wasn’t just me [targeted] But at the same time my team investigating war crimes. “

Serhii stops withdrawing the sought -after poster sent to thousands of people in the encrypted application telegram.

He had to move the house, get rid of his phone and make a car resource that could withstand gunfire to “save his life”.

All officers are now working from hidden, unidentified places and pay extra attention to using the Internet to avoid being followed.

With his own eyes, the father of the three saw that even your most reliable friend could be a traitor who feeds information to the Russians.

“We found a FSB agent in the Kharkiv region here,” he adds: “Russia’s collaborators in our own lands and [secret] agents. “

An example that sticks to his mind was that a funeral party in a village of 300 people was bombed by Russia after a false clue to a top -level army official of a collaborator.

The attack killed 49 people, including children, and impressed almost everyone in the region. Serhii later discovered that the man who sent the text that caused the massacres escaped to Russia and escaped from justice.

Living in the midst of such insecurity, anxiety and danger reduces many people to a trembling wreck – and the voice of the police chief cracks with emotions because he explains some of the most terrible crimes of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and often there is a barely line on Serhii’s face.

Kharkiv is known as the place of one of the most important wars of the best war in 2022. The city’s futuristic Soviet architecture and rising rubble piles of the city often make me feel like a small gear in a very large machine.

From a distance, people in the Endless Freedom Square, especially under the towers of the industrial palace, similar to the silhouette of the 1920s from Metropolis, are similar to the matches.

Kharkiv is simply “home için for Serhii, who has been in the city since he joined the National Police of Ukraine at the age of 16.

“I was born in a small town under 40 miles from Kharkiv,” he says, “But my whole life is connected [the city]. I was trained here and gave me a career. It was the place where I met my wife and my three children were born. “

In December 2021, while Russia gathered troops on the Ukrainian border, Serhii was given the biggest job of his career to date and became the chairman of the regional investigation. When Putin’s war machine began shortly after the brutal invasion, Serhii realized that his responsibilities would be very different from any police officer in Kharkiv.

Of course, the police officers may face a personal danger in peace time, but this is different.

“We are a target for the Russian army,” Serhii adds, “Some of my colleagues were killed by ballistic rockets, others were killed by drones. [Investigating their deaths] It is a different and difficult situation. But this is a crime and this is our job, so we continue. “

Efforts to bring civilians, torture and rape those who kill civilians never stop in the secret offices of the investigation unit.

Serhii takes us to his armored car. Coffee is in the hands of the police chief and team to chat with the team of documents full of details of testimony and physical evidence. Limited photographs stop examining the faces of some suspects looking at the concrete walls.

In a picture, Vladimir Putin prints medals on his chest by Vladimir Putin, who is convicted of killing five civilians. Serhii is one of the many criminals protected by the Russian regime, where the inspector team was successfully prosecuted in absenteeism.

I asked him if a hero, whom a president knew he had committed so terrible persecution, was annoying to watch a man.

Orum I’m doing this for the future, or he replied, “I hope every day every Russian criminal will be punished. [committed] War crimes are the same as the Nazis of the Second World War. “

Such prosecution remains the same standards as other crimes, but the chaos of the war can sometimes make things more difficult.

Physical evidence and interviews usually form the backbone of a case, helping to identify new technologies and military intelligence suspects.

Serhii shows me a complex digital 3 -dimensional crime model model used for an investigation into a mass tomb in Izyum town, which was discovered in his office in September 2022.

He takes us there to see the scale really to see the scale.

Without such a terrible tragedy, the forests on the edge of Izyum would have been peaceful. There is a deep pine smell and a gentle sweep of the branches moving in the wind.

Serhii, who looks at more than 400 graves marked with raw wooden crosses, remembers the moment he learned the site.

“After the occupation, civilians in the region told the police officers this place, or he says. “My inspectors came here, took a photo, shared with me and started to work the next day. A large team went down and we took 448 bodies for more than seven days.”

Most of the ruins were so bad that only the emergence of relatives of missing people could be defined by giving a large number of DNA examples. It is not yet clear why Putin’s troops created the mass tomb in Izyum. Serhii found that some of the victims were killed by Russian air strikes and then thrown into the forest, but he could not find a reason to count the crosses stuck on the top of the corpses.

The Russian propaganda claimed that the mass tomb was related to crimes committed by the so -called “Ukrainian Nazis”.

Such claims do not have validity; However, there are strong indicators that Russia is trying to destroy evidence.

As he retreated, the Russian forces filled the areas around the mass of mass civilians and soldiers with mines. Later, when the bodies were removed, the refrigerators holding them were hit by what looked like an targeted air strike.

Serhii said, “We made five rockets to the location of the bodies. They hit one of the refrigerators and nearby.

He cannot prove that the rockets were fired into the corpses, but there were no other reasonable goals in the region.

Looking at the grave site, Serhii’s voice becomes muffled with emotions. This is a scene that traumatis even the most harsh Kharkiv police officers.

Orum I feel terrible, or he says. “This is not the Putin or military commanders – they decided to be alive, not the civilians, not to the war, they should be alive. I think the children we find here.

“The youngest was a seven -year -old child killed by ballistic rockets. He and his family were in a basement, trying to be in a safe place, but Russia killed him.”

Serhii not only fights for the dead, but also looking for justice for life. Every day, new crimes given to the civilian population during the occupation of the team are mentioned.

By dusting Brown Izyum Dirt from our shoes, we step into the car to visit the place where such horror, which has become an abandoned police station that has become a Russian torture room.

Serhii squeezes a series of plastic gloves and removes a flashlight when the heavy metal door opens. Cold, even in relatively mild spring conditions; You can only imagine how the freezing profit of March 2022 will feel for prisoners lying on concrete floors in windows made of metal rods.

“Most of the prisoners in these torture rooms were there because they didn’t want to be a part of Russia, or he says.

“Russian soldiers caught everyone who looked pro-Ukrainian. They spoke the language, exhibited a flag, or a collaborator was close to the army.

“I met a man who broke his arm and beaten with a bat. We had cases of rape in the torture rooms.”

Painful traction continues to be overwhelming to the senses. The buckets used as toilet are filled with foul black liquid and throw the corners into the trash. There are torn clothes in the beds.

Serhii shines the flashlight on the walls to reveal the traces of a prisoner who wants to count the days. Below, a prayer was carved on the wall: “God save us, Amen.”

“It’s hard to listen to stories about this place, Ser says Serhii. “But these will continue to fight for our people and future justice. It is important for us and Ukraine.”

As he separated the rain roads, he began to fall slightly. Serhii shakes my hand tightly and stepped into his armored car.

It is not likely that everything will not be easier, but he knows that it should continue: Who else on the rubble on the front of Ukraine for the new evidence of the savagery committed by Russia?