Photo: Zohra Bensemra / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA
The Ukrainian police have named a Russian soldier they suspect of liability in the murder of a 52-year-old woman in Bucha, near Kyiv, who was identified by her manicure, the town council reported on Sunday.
According to Ukrainian police, Artyom Taraev, the commander of Russia’s 234th Air Assault Regiment, gave an order on 5 March 2022 “to shoot all civilians who appeared at the intersection of Yablunska Street and Vodoprovidna Street” in Bucha.
“At about 11:15am that same day, Iryna Filkina was struck by at least 15 bullets fired by the Russian military as she rode her bicycle … According to the investigation, 13 civilians were killed in total on Yablunska Street as a result of Taraev’s order,” the Bucha council said.
Filkina worked at the Epitsentr home-improvement store on the outskirts of Kyiv. According to relatives, she initially hunkered down in the basement of the store when the war began but on 5 March decided to cycle home to her village via nearby Bucha and Irpin. Filkina spoke to her daughter as she was passing through Irpin, but then stopped responding to calls and messages.
The Russian army entered Bucha on 27 February 2022, but the town was liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on 31 March. Over 33 days of occupation, the Russian military is believed to have committed at least 9,000 war crimes.
Journalists published photographs of Filkina’s body after Russian forces retreated from the Kyiv region in April 2022. Friends identified the woman by her red manicure with a heart design on one of her fingernails.
The photo of Filkina’s body “became a symbol of Russian atrocities during its occupation of the Kyiv region”, the council deputies said in a statement. “Identifying a suspect is an important step in investigating war crimes carried out on Ukrainian territory. All those involved in killing civilians must be brought to international justice,” they concluded.
