Driving through the tranquil streets of Bucha on Wednesday, I could not believe this was the same war-ravaged town I visited five months ago.

Many of the town’s residents have returned. I saw families shopping in supermarkets, mothers strolling with babies, young boys playing football on the streets.

When we reached Vokzal’na street, we had to park our car and walk the rest of the way because the road was being covered with a fresh layer of asphalt and workers were painting the lanes.

Had I not been here before, I could have easily mistaken this place for any peaceful European town.

Vokzal’na street is particularly interesting to me because it was here that I spent most of my time in Bucha in April. It was also the site of some of the worst fighting that took place in this town.

I came to Bucha for the first time on 4 April 2022, together with journalists Giuseppe Attard, Liza Kozlenko, John Sweeney and Alex Zakletsky.

Bucha was making international headlines because hundreds of civilians had been butchered by the Russian occupiers. Many people had been shot dead as they tried to flee the fighting in their cars or bicycles.

The Ukrainian forces had also discovered a mass grave, behind the town church, with 280 bodies inside.

I remember having this feeling of dread as we drove towards the town, the five of us cramped into a seven-seater.

We had been warned that Bucha had been heavily mined and booby-trapped by the retreating Russians. I had this feeling that I would die there.

When we got to Bucha, we first stopped by a school where a Russian tank had been destroyed right by the main entrance.

A few metres away, we found the badly charred bodies of two Russian soldiers.

We then headed down to Vokzal’na street, where a Russian armoured column had been completely decimated by Ukrainian forces.

It was an apocalyptic scene … burnt out Russian T-72s, BMPs, BMDs and troop transport and fuel trucks. Some of them still had bodies inside.

A few metres away, we spotted a soldier’s boot. Upon closer inspection, we realised that the owner’s foot was still inside it.

The chilly April air still smelled like gunfire, burnt fuel and rotting corpses. The town had been liberated only a few days earlier.

A group of soldiers told us that there were dead civilians in a nearby house.

We were then beckoned inside a private property — Vokzal’na street is lined with quaint two-storey houses, their gardens full of pear and plum trees.

Inside, we found the bodies of two men — civilians — they had both been shot in the face at point blank range.

One of them, Alexander Fedorov , had come to Bucha to work as a construction worker.

The other man was only identified a few weeks ago. He was a local who was trying to seek shelter from the fighting.

The area looks so much different now. The bodies were removed a long time ago. The street has been cleared of destroyed Russian tanks, most of which were exhibited on Kyiv’s Khreschatyk street on Independence Day.

The road has been resurfaced. Trees that had been shredded by gunfire have been cut down. Buildings that were heavily damaged have been demolished, the rubble cleared.

But some of the scars remain. Garden fences are still riddled with bullet holes (I personally believe the Russians started spraying the houses with machinegun fire as their column started taking fire from both sides and the Javelins started raining down).

Most windows are still broken, and several residents were carrying out repairs to their damaged homes.

The trees are no longer barren, and the foliage now obscures the view of a nearby block of apartments that was hit by tank fire.

The mass grave behind St Andrew’s church has been filled in with soil. Only a small memorial and some bouquets of flowers mark the site where 280 murdered men, women and children were dumped before the Russian retreat.

But despite the massive clean-up, Bucha will forever in my mind be associated with the brutality of war, murder and death.

Having said that, my second visit has given me a much deeper insight into this senseless war which has dragged on for more than six months.

In the documentary that Giuseppe and I produced earlier this year, I said (when speaking about the fighting in Irpin and Bucha) that this war is not being fought on some distant battlefield but, rather, among the people.

After visiting Bucha for a second time this week, I believe in that statement more strongly.

I have now seen what Bucha was like before the war — a tranquil suburban town which many young families call home.

The war came to their homes, the tanks drove down their streets, the killing took place in their front gardens.

For those who left the town before the fighting started, it might be harder to fully grasp what happened here and settling back in might not be that difficult.

For those who stayed behind and fought, Bucha will forever be stained by the violence of war, the dark memories of fiery battles and the killing of innocent civilians.

No amount of rebuilding can ever erase the atrocities carried out by the Kremlin’s soldiers, not just in Bucha, but all over Ukraine.