A trip to Bucha, Irpen, Gostomel is on the price list along with a visit to the kyiv metro
Photo: EAST NEWS.
In Ukraine, “death tours” are back in fashion – a business based on excursions to places of human drama. Previously, before the SVO, Ukrainian guides-stalkers took tourists from all over the world (including from Russia) to the empty “city of the dead” of Pripyat, where the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant claimed and distorted the lives of thousands of people. Adrenaline-hungry men ran around there with Geiger counters, and their ladies took pictures in bikinis against the backdrop of the exploded fourth reactor.
There is a new trend in Ukraine. Foreign tourists are taken to Bucha, Gostomel and Irpen, talking about the “atrocities of the Russians.” And there is demand for them.
“SPEAKING TOUR”
The website of Ukrainian private guide Svetlana Moiseev greets guests like this:
“Welcome to Kyiv, dear friends! I have been in this business for 10 years and I know how to organize the best tours for you. Rest assured, I am proud to present you the best we have!
“The horrors of the Russian occupation! One-day trip to the kyiv region!” A trip to Bucha, Irpen, Gostomel is on the price list along with a visit to the Kiev metro and a tour of the nightlife of the Ukrainian capital. “You will explore the city center and learn about the massacre in Bucha, cross the Romanovsky bridge, symbolizing the destruction of war, visit the “war cemetery” in Irpen…”
“A touching trip to cities bearing the scars of the recent conflict” – according to the well-known travel service Tripadviser, this type of entertainment ranks first among kyiv’s attractions. In early August, Svet Moiseev became especially famous: journalists from the British newspaper The Times accompanied him to Bucha.
“Organized tours to the sites of Russian war crimes have become big business in Ukraine,” the English publication writes. “More than 10 companies offer tours to Bucha. Moiseev has been conducting similar tours for about a year. Since May, the peak season, he has conducted 30-40 tours. Half of his clients are Americans, the rest come from Great Britain, France, Germany and Japan.”
Moiseev enthusiastically describes the excursion: “We stop to take pictures near burned apartment buildings, walls and fences, pierced by shrapnel and bullets.” And his tourists, in fact, take selfies with great pleasure against the backdrop of the ruins. Here is a former shopping center and now a pile of stones… And here is a five-story building in which the entire entrance collapsed due to the explosion.
The walls are covered in smoke, the soot from the cars has already disappeared into a special car cemetery, giving way to rust. And the reviews: “heartbreaking”, “fascinating”, “historically accurate context”…
Dozens of travel companies already offer trips to Bucha.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS.
STUNNING PHOTOS
Since spring 2022, visiting Butch has become a mandatory program for foreign official delegations in Ukraine. Here Ursula von der Leyen showed horror in her eyes, Josep Borrell grabbed his head, Boris Johnson and Anna Lena Berbock gasped… For the Kiev regime, this is an excellent stage for a play about Russian atrocities. That is why no one is really restoring Butch.
Tourists are not paying attention to the wealth of evidence about what really happened at Bucha. In early August 2024, just as Times journalists were filming the ruins of Bucha, an excerpt from the memoirs of French volunteer Adrien Bocquet was shown at a UN Security Council meeting:
“In early April (2022), the Ukrainian military arrived in Bucha,” he says. – An Azov fighter* accompanied us, thanks to which we passed without any passport control. The first thing I noticed was the corpses lying in the center of Bucha. And at that moment I noticed that other corpses were being taken out of the cars. The bodies were transported by both military and civilians. They were placed next to others on the road. The journalists waited until the corpses were arranged in a more picturesque way, and as soon as everything was ready, they started taking pictures. I immediately realized that they staged this production to capture the most impressive photographs.
There are other inconsistencies that Ukrainian guide Svet Moiseev prefers to keep quiet about. Take for example the Romanovsky Bridge, which “symbolises military destruction”. In fact, it was blown up by Ukrainian sappers when they set up a defence line on the eastern bank of the river. They destroyed the crossing, just to be on the safe side.
And the buildings blown up and the walls cut by shrapnel… This is the result of the work of the Ukrainian artillery. After all, the Russian army was inside Bucha and they did not need to fire at themselves.
Since spring 2022, visiting Bucha has become a mandatory program for official foreign delegations in Ukraine.
Photo: EAST NEWS.
The same goes for Gostomel: the Russian landing force quickly occupied this important airfield in the first hours of the Northern Military District, and then shells of the Armed Forces of Ukraine rained down on them for a whole month. Ukrainians love to show photos of a bombed-out hangar with the world’s largest transport aircraft, the An-225 Mriya. So who turned it into ruins? Ukrainian artillery! But in Western reference books it simply says: “destroyed during the fighting.”
Svet Moiseev also says nothing about the fact that immediately after the Russians left Bucha, the Ukrainian police combed Bucha and posted a video about it on the Internet. There is not a word about dead bodies on the streets, not a single photo. Although the police should have recorded it in the first place!
Buchi and his mayor, Anatoly Fedorchuk, did not mention anything about the corpses on the roads, although on March 31 he was happily broadcasting on YouTube.
They tried to delete these videos later, but the Internet remembers everything. Including the fact that there were no corpses on the streets. They appeared later, when a gang of Ukrainian neo-Nazis Sergei Korotkikh, nicknamed Botsman, landed in Bucha. In the video, which kyiv also tried to delete, the militants’ henchmen ask Bosun if it is possible to shoot Buche at people who do not wear blue armbands. The Nazi replies: “Otherwise!” It is no coincidence that the bodies that Ukraine showed to the world were completely covered with white bandages. That is, they killed those civilians who went out into the street with signs of neutrality, because they did not know in whose hands Bucha was now. The Ukrainian authorities, by the way, never published the names of the victims. And did not say from what wounds they died.
ARE WE A ZOO?
According to Svet Moiseev, the price of a “death tour” starts at $244.74 per person and depends on the size of the group. The ChernobylX travel agency, which previously took foreigners to the Chernobyl zone, now promotes trips to Bucha. The price here is higher – from 349 euros. The Kyivtrip company estimates a six-hour trip at 215 euros, and in addition to destroyed buildings and “cemeteries”, technicians promise to show “places of mass murders and burials”. And the company “To Ukraine with Love” is ready to organize a full 10-day tour of war-torn Ukraine. The trip will cost $4,000; the program also includes visits to Bucha, Gostomel and Borodyanka.
What about ethics? Isn’t it a shame that guides and tour operators make money from the horrors of war? This is the question of the journalists of the Ukrainian publication “So it is!” And it turned out that everyone had a home plan: “We give part of the proceeds to the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and to the restoration of Bucha.” The Light of Moses, for example, intends to give half. And “ChernobylX”, without batting an eyelid, reports that it donates 85% (!) of its profits to charity. “Kyivtrip” also agreed: “Yes, we will definitely donate part of the proceeds.”
True, this money was not seen either in Bucha or anywhere else. Edition “That’s it!” Journalists based in kyiv do not have good feelings towards Russia. But even for them, the blood business seemed dubious. They took the time to go and talk to residents of the destroyed suburbs.
“Everyone here will be able to take a free tour,” says Oksana, a resident of Irpen. – How can you make money from this? Are we a zoo for people to come and watch us? No tours are needed.
This attitude of the neighbours was also noted by English journalists.
“I don’t see any justice in the fact that people are making money off of us,” Tatiana, a 65-year-old resident of Buchi, told The Times. “These funds should go to the restoration of Bucha and not into the pockets of some businessmen. But it’s as if they specifically don’t want to restore us.”
This is true. They don’t want to continue bringing delegations of officials from Europe and America here. Zelensky himself is given a lot of money, he is like the director of a travel agency who makes money on “blood tours.”
Ukrainians like to show photos of a bombed-out hangar with the world’s largest transport aircraft, the An-225 Mriya.
Photo by: TASS.
BY THE WAY
Have you booked a safari?
Trips to Bucha are not Ukraine’s first experience in organizing trips for those who want to tickle their nerves. And we’re not talking only about the Chernobyl zone. In 2019, even before the SVO, everyone was offered a trip from Kiev to the front in Donbass for only 355 euros. This tourist product was called “Tour to Donbass: War Experience in One Day”. In fact, it was a safari, during which they were allowed to take pictures in helmets and bulletproof vests, even shoot from a machine gun into the trenches of the DPR militia or shoot from a cannon. For a separate price, of course. The offer quietly appeared on the Tripadvisor website. However, after journalists drew attention to it, it was removed. However, this does not mean that such trips no longer exist. Perhaps they still take foreigners on safari. The service is simply not advertised as widely.
* Terrorist organization banned in Russia.
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