Ukraine: On Bucha anniversary, a 'wounded soul' aches

STORY: Kateryna Kosych remembers how Russian troops killed and looted when they occupied Bucha for a month last year.

This "Alley of Glory" commemorates the dead.

A year on, signs of rejuvenation are everywhere, but they won't bring back Kosych's son-in-law.

The Russians caused so much grief, she says. "And it won't heal soon."

Bucha, a leafy suburb of Kyiv, became a byword for brutality. Ukrainian authorities say 461 people were killed here alone.

International investigators are still collecting evidence of what Ukraine says were atrocities committed in Bucha. Moscow denies the allegations.

Daria Yesypchuk has enlisted her little boy Marko to help renovate , but the threat never goes away.

"A few nights ago, there was a drone attack at night. We heard everything, and my husband even saw how drones were shot down. You hear the automatic gunfire when they shoot them down, and the children ask about it. The children know that those are the occupiers, that there are missiles."

Marko is only four, but he remembers life under Russia's brutal month-long occupation of the town.

"We were without phones, we didn't have electricity. We sat on our beanbag chairs, we slept on them, and when we went outside, there was blood everywhere."

Sounds of construction clatter in the crisp spring air.

On Vokzalna Street, an internationally funded reconstruction effort aims to erase the many traces of war.

Most here believe Kyiv will win, but priest Andriy Holovin says the emotional wounds could fester for generations.

"We should understand that it's easy to rebuild walls, but it's much harder to rebuild a wounded soul."

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday (March 30) called the liberation of Bucha and other towns around Kyiv, quote, "a symbol of the fact that Ukraine will be able to win this war."