The New York Times has published footage showing Russian soldiers murdering the residents of Bucha in the Kyiv region of Ukraine.
In two videos, Russian paratroopers march nine hostages at gunpoint along a street in Bucha. The witnesses who spoke to The Times said they heard gunshots and did not see the men alive afterwards.
A drone video filmed a day later on 5 March, also obtained by The Times,
shows the dead bodies lying on the ground by the side of the Russian HQ building at 144 Yablunska Street as two soldiers stand guard beside them. Among the bodies, a captive in a blue sweatshirt is visible. A man in a similar sweatshirt featured in the earlier photographs of the Bucha massacre.
Yury Razhik, who lives in front of the building, said some captives had their hands tied. The Russian soldiers made them kneel down and then shot one of the men.
The men in the video were regular residents of Bucha, some of them had joined the territorial defence, i.e. paramilitary units, earlier. “I was shot and I fell down. The bullet went into my side,” one of the survivors said. “I fell down and I pretended to be dead,” he said. “I didn’t move and didn’t breathe. It was cold outside and you could see people’s breath.”
The 104th and 234th Airborne Assault Regiments of the Russian army are supposedly responsible for the executions, their packing slips for crates of weapons and ammunition left in the HQ building serving as evidence.
Russia’s foreign affairs and defence ministries did not respond to requests for comment on The Times’s findings.
The town of Bucha was occupied by the Russian army for over a month after the invasion had started on 24 February. The Russian Defence Ministry claims that the Russian army left Bucha on 30 March. Shortly after that, mass civilian deaths were reported. Mayor of Bucha Anatoly Fedoruk said in late April that exhumation and identification of bodies in Bucha was nearly complete. According to the mayor, 412 dead bodies were found as of 23 April, however, this number may change.
Servicemen from Russia’s Vityaz security force, a paratrooper force from Pskov in north-west Russia and at least three Chechen units allied to Ramzan Kadyrov were the occupying forces of Bucha, Reuters said in their investigation of 5 May.
