How will Ukraine’s war narrative be taught – and shape a nation?
The Ukrainian teacher appears haggard, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the trauma of witnessing Russia’s deadly military advance on his hometown of Bucha, the suburb northwest of Kyiv whose name has become synonymous with Russian cruelties in Ukraine.
As the Russian troops arrived, Oleh Azarov recalls, he helped wounded and retreating Ukrainian soldiers, even as he feared local infiltrators. Going outside was terrifying, he says, because “you never know how this will finish; people were being killed in the streets.”
“They were very intense days and nights. ... I stayed to see it with my own eyes,” Mr. Azarov says of the occupation of Bucha. Later, the gruesome scenes of bodies left in the open by withdrawing Russian forces – often with hands tied behind their backs and shot execution-style – reverberated around the world.
But Mr. Azarov was not alone in witnessing the atrocities as they occurred: A handful of
