On a breezy afternoon last spring, the Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman took me on a tour of a public park near the center of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, along with a team of aides, architects, historians and artists. They had spent several years building a complex of memorials on the grounds, honoring the victims of a massacre that took place there during World War II. But the project had become so controversial in Ukraine, especially in the context of the country’s ongoing war with Russia, that the entourage had brought a team of bodyguards, who surrounded Fridman in a loose formation, tensing every time a stranger came too close.
Babyn Yar
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A man lays flowers at the monument for the victims executed by the Nazis in Babyn Yar on Sept. 29, 2021 in Kyiv. The commemorative event marks the 80th anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre, which killed nearly 34,000 Jews on Sept. 29-30, 1941.
