For two hundred years, Loshchynivka has been a quiet place to live. Flung out in the westernmost reaches of the Odessa region, southern Ukraine, the village is closer to Moldova and Romania than to the seat of its regional government. Farming dominates village life. Births, marriages and harvests mark its high points, funerals its low ones. Its 1,300 inhabitants – ethnic Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Russians and Roma – all share the same steady, predictable rural cycle. A cycle shattered by the murder of nine-year-old Angelina Моiseyenko on 27 August.
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A barbie doll in a plastic case marks the patch of earth where her body was found. In the village square a hundred metres away, police loiter with Kalashnikovs, sheltering from the evening sun in a shady treeline. A cottage across from them stands abandoned, windows smashed, walls charred. The flames that consumed the house’s insides have reached out and licked black patterns on its white paint.
