Mass executions, torture, rape: the Russian army staged a massacre in the suburbs of Kyiv

After the retreat of Russian troops from the Kiev region in the city of Bucha, dozens of bodies of civilians were found, including those who were shot, raped, with signs of torture and with their hands tied behind their backs. Meduza.

Photo: Shutterstock

In total, 410 bodies of civilians have already been removed from the liberated settlements. Nevertheless, the Russian Ministry of Defense called the images and videos from Bucha “another staging of the Kiev regime” (this is the standard reaction of the Russian side not only to the statements of Kyiv, but also to the reports of independent journalists working on this war). Katerina Ukraintseva, deputy of the city council and territorial defense volunteer, spoke about how Bucha lived under Russian occupation.

During the invasion of the city, she was in Bucha. Evacuated from there on March 11th. On April 2, she returned there for the first time with humanitarian aid.

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“Bucha is located near Gostomel. We, as ordinary citizens, naively believed that the main actions would take place in Kyiv, and Bucha would be bypassed. We thought this was a safe place. Even after the war started, we didn’t expect it to start with us,” she says. “But already on February 24-25 we heard roars and explosions throughout Bucha, saw the glow from explosions and fires. The helicopters are coming. Our artillery began to “work off” those who landed there. We practically watched from the windows as helicopters entered the Gostomel airfield. They were bombed, but they still flew.”

After that, sabotage groups of the Russian army began to seep into the forests.

And there are cottages and the private sector - they began to occupy the houses of people who were evacuated at the very beginning. The first sabotage and reconnaissance groups appeared.

“We sat in tension, closing the entrances. Russian troops were getting closer and closer. They began to dig in around Bucha, but in the center this was not felt,” says Katerina.

On March 4, a convoy of Russian military equipment passed through the main street, Vokzalnaya, on its way to Irpen: Bucha was first used as a passage there. They were worked out by artillery from the Irpin checkpoint, destroyed most of their equipment - literally burned to the ground. The rest began to dissipate along the Bucha.

“It was clear from their actions that they did not know the terrain, they were simply driving around the city chaotically. Self-defense was present in the city, and a shootout began. The Russian military began responding directly to residential buildings. During such a shootout, there was a fire in my house: a shell landed on the third floor from an armored reconnaissance patrol vehicle. “I live on the fourth floor,” said Katerina. — There were fires all over Bucha. There was no major fire in our house, so my neighbors and I took a ladder and extinguished it ourselves. There were hits in the store and cars in the yard.”

When it began to fly into the yard, everyone began to hide already in the basements. People of all the old people and children were lowered there.

“For us, living in a basement began from the first days of the war. We carried everything we needed, prepared water, and tried to create as many living conditions as possible,” the woman said.

“People sat in basements and asked to be taken away”

Katerina believes that there was a poor preparation of the city authorities for the start of the war. People were told to the last that everything was under control, and the city, of course, was not ready for an invasion. People were under fire, shops and pharmacies were abruptly closed.

“The humanitarian catastrophe began in February. When a Russian tank hit Novus (a shopping center in Bucha), people ran there and began to take out everything they had. This can be called looting, but they had no choice. People needed at least some food supplies. The need for medicine was critical, so shops and pharmacies began to open. No one stopped the people who did this. The police and the military registration and enlistment office left in the first days,” says Katerina.

There was no one in the city, it was defended on its own. It wasn't even a therodefense, not an official formation.
“We didn’t have a terrorist defense as such: there were those who united themselves. People went to the military registration and enlistment office and asked to give them weapons, they wanted to defend themselves, they did not know where to go. There was nowhere to go. There were veterans who had fought before, simply patriots. They put on everything that was left over from 2014, took the weapons that had been stored since then, and went to defend the city,” says the woman.

“Volodya Kovalsky was the first to die. In 2015, in Donbass, he lost two legs and walked on two prosthetics. I didn’t drink myself to death, like many people in such a situation, but continued to live. He built a house, organized a business, provided for his family. At the very beginning of the war he came to self-defense. They kicked him out, but he still stayed. So he is without two legs! — took away a piece of equipment from the enemy and brought it to our guys. Later died in battle. He is survived by his wife and children. We don't even know how he was buried. The family was taken out,” says Ukraintseva.

Evacuation was not organized for a long time, when it was still possible to do it. In Irpen, the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the defense and local authorities joined in - people were taken out under bullets. In Bucha, people chose only themselves.

The occupation took place on the 5th of March. From the 4th to the 5th they fired at the Stekolka area. Now the corpses of civilians lie on Yablonskaya - this is the longest street, it is parallel to Irpen. The dead residents of the city have been lying there since the beginning of March.
Russian troops placed all their equipment there, and Irpin was bombed from this street. They pulled heavy equipment to these houses, occupied the roofs, put machine guns there. The Russians dug in - down to the snipers - on the upper floors of high-rise buildings. People heard the scraping of metal in the hallways.

“Those who tried to leave were driven back and threatened with execution. They were allowed to go outside only on March 8 or 9. They were allowed to heat water on fires outside, because there was no longer any light or water. In those days, the first reports of civilian bodies on the streets appeared. They set up their checkpoint there on Yablonskaya. To evacuate, people had to go through the Russian checkpoint in order to get to the Ukrainian one,” she says.

“It is unknown how many people managed to leave; we should first count the corpses. Volunteers were delivering humanitarian aid yesterday, one of the teams saw these bodies. Some were riding a bicycle before they died, others were walking as a couple. They lie there completely differently. We cannot determine the cause of their death from photographs. This will be clear only after the examination,” Ukraintseva said.

“Those who escaped from Yablonskaya say that it was hell. There was panic. From the first day, people from there, residents of the street, wrote to me. They sat in the basements and asked to be picked up. They asked me to take them with my babies and said they would die,” she says.

“They said that they need to go further to Kyiv, but they don’t want to”

Bucha did not behave aggressively.

“We did not have Ukrainian rallies, no one came out with flags. There were talks about rallies at the very beginning, they wanted to unite. But the Russian troops went so hard that people simply did not dare. We tried to take care of people.
We had a situation where a girl went out onto the common balcony in the evening to smoke - with a phone in her hands. We practically kicked her out: there was a risk that she would be mistaken for a fire spotter, then the whole house would be gone,” says Katerina. “It happened that Russian soldiers would hand over dry rations to the basement, and then throw a grenade there. And this happened. There is no death toll in this story. In one of the residential complexes, during the cleanup, they were afraid to go into the dark basement, and just in case, they also threw a grenade there. By chance, no one died from it.”

“There is a feeling that different units were dispersed throughout Bucha - they behaved very differently. The city center was lucky - there was some kind of medical unit there. They collected their “two hundredth” dead and “three hundredth” wounded, even donating their diesel fuel to the hospital. There were very young guys there, as if they were students. When they handed over the diesel fuel, they said that they needed to go further to Kyiv, but they didn’t want to - and it would be better to tell the authorities that they had “spent everything”. Among them were those who did not want to fight,” says the woman.

“But those who came in at the very beginning, when the occupation began, are animals. A lot of people have disappeared. We don’t know what’s wrong with them,” she says.

"They took everything"

The first coordinated evacuation along the green corridor took place only on March 9, and already from March 4 it was impossible to move around the city. If before that it was simply dangerous, then from that moment it became impossible.

When the evacuation began, people were allowed to travel only by car. For all the time it was carried out four or five times. For the whole week before the liberation, there was no evacuation at all, people were on the verge of collapse.

“It’s scary to imagine how many people died from lack of food and medicine. Lately I have had messages from the series: “A person died at such and such an address. Who will take the corpse?” You receive this information, but there is no one to pass it on to. Only Russian soldiers remained in the city. They took everything: ambulances and hospitals,” says Katerina. “When a person died during shelling, this is understandable, this is war. But when civilians died without receiving food, water or medicine, that’s a completely different matter. Even war has its own rules.”

The Russian military tore down all the doors in the houses, conducted searches in private sectors, and searched for the Atomic Forces.

“Someone leaked the base of ATO veterans and their families to the Russian army. “I myself am part of the community of relatives of the victims; my brother died in 2014,” says Ukraintseva. — City residents appeared who voluntarily showed where to look for military personnel and their families, as well as simply patriots. We have a family: the guy was the son of a deceased ATO veteran. They found my son and shot him. They barely took the body to bury it. Now there is no contact with his mother either.”

“Of those who were imprisoned in Lesnaya Bucha, I had one girl with whom we kept in touch. At some point, she sent a photo of the corpse. A man is lying on his stomach, and his hands are tied behind him with tape. I asked to identify him - they sent me documents, but they couldn’t check it. She sent me a photo of it upside down, although this should not have been done - it could have been mined. His face had already begun to rot, he had been lying on the asphalt for so long. When I enlarged the photo, I saw that he had a cable stretched through his mouth, between his lips, around his head, and his eyes were wrapped with tape,” says Katerina.

“They buried him themselves, left his ID next to him: I think the Russians found fault with him precisely because of him. An old ID card from 2005, it says “adviser to the president.” Apparently they saw this phrase. It will most likely be possible to install it, but later,” she says.

"We were looking for someone who would cooperate"

Katerina witnessed the first contact between the Russian military and the executive committee. There was no longer any of the representatives of the authorities, only guards and volunteers. It was around March 8th or 9th.

She approached the building of the executive committee to check on the guards and volunteers, and stood near the barrier. The Russian military drove up in an old armored personnel carrier, three people were sitting on the armor. They drove up to the central entrance of the executive committee, began to pull on the door. The guards came out the back door. The military ask them: “Where are the mayor and all the deputies?” They told them that they all left. And the Russians say that it is necessary to somehow improve life in the city. We were looking for someone who would cooperate.

They occupied the city and destroyed everything - both the water supply and the communication towers. No electricity, no water, no internet. And they have to live somehow. Hearing that no one was there, they got into an armored personnel carrier and left, promising to return later.

“Later, I found out that they took these guys (the guards of the executive committee and volunteers) prisoner, covered their eyes with tape, beat them with machine guns and interrogated them. Later released. The guys said that during the interrogation there was a sniper who said that he had been watching them through the scope for three days. He tried to demoralize, to say that the Ukrainian troops had abandoned them.
At the same time, on a bench nearby, as I was told, another guy was interrogated. He's going to hand over everyone. He told us who lived where in the nearest houses, and boasted that he served with Igor Girkin. This is how you live and don’t know who your neighbor is,” says Ukraintseva.

“Many people collaborated with the Russian army, but there are even more who resisted. Everyone who remained in the occupation helped the Ukrainian Armed Forces in any way they could. Everything that could be seen and conveyed was conveyed. Without the people, such victories are impossible. Everyone is fighting on their own front,” she says.

“I left, and three days later they were already in our house”

On March 11, Katerina gathered all the neighbors and said that she was evacuating, offered to join, some agreed. There are those who have sick parents who have no one to leave with. The elderly didn't leave either.

She was very active in public. People really needed information, so she often broadcast live on social networks - as soon as she learned something. Russian troops have already occupied Bucha, and Katerina recorded live broadcasts of where they are. She was later informed that they even watched her streams.

If she had information that there would be a purge, she informed. “Cleansing” means street fighting, and it’s even easier to die in them than from artillery.

“The bullet is stupid. We immediately conveyed information about this, people closed in basements. We had no sirens, no air defense systems, no organized bomb shelters like in Kyiv. The peaceful city was not ready for such a brutal war.
I left because I started receiving signals that the Russian military was looking for me. I needed to physically leave there. I left, and three days later they were already in our house. Dead, I would be of less use,” said Ukraintseva.

“Green light from Putin for safari - and Ukrainians were shot”

Medusa published more testimonies of the inhabitants of the city about life under the Russian occupation.

Anatoly Fedoruk

Mayor Buchi.

“The bodies of the executed people are still lying on Yablonskaya Street in Bucha. With hands tied with white, "peaceful" rags behind his back. Shot in the back of the head. You can imagine what atrocities the Russian military did here.
Any war has rules of conduct with civilians. The Russians showed that they killed civilians knowingly. They practically got the green light from Putin on a safari - and they shot Ukrainians.”

Basil

66 years old, resident of Bucha, in an interview with Reuters.

“The tank was standing behind me. (Cries.) They sat in the cellar for two weeks. There was food, but there was no light or gas. Water was heated on candles to keep warm. Bottles were put here in the bosom to drink warm water. In felt boots, as they were, they slept. ”

Maria

74, resident of Bucha, in an interview with Reuters.

"It was very scary. Twice I returned from the other world. Once I left the room, and the bullet pierced the window and glass, got stuck in the closet. On another occasion, a shell fragment nearly hit his leg.
The third time I went out, I was walking and did not know that a Russian soldier was standing with a rifle, the bullets went right next to me. When I got home, I couldn't speak.
We don't want them to come back. I had a dream today - that they left and did not return.

Christina

A resident of Bucha, in an interview with The Insider.

“Those were terrible days. When neither your yard, nor your house, nor even your life belongs to you. No electricity, water, gas. It is forbidden to go out, if you go out, they will shoot you. Enemy vehicles entered our yard. On March 5, they broke the windows, broke in and took away the phones. On the 6th, they took my father and husband for interrogation. We found correspondence and calls to the Terodefense (we tried to leave and learn at least a little bit about the situation). They watch everything - posts, telegram channels, and if you wrote something that they don't like, you're dead.

People are being shot around the hut, what terrible sounds. Even worse than the sound of a bomb. You just sit in the basement and pray that your relatives will be returned. And we were lucky, we got a commander who loves children, and knowing that my three-year-old daughter was in the basement, he ordered to overtake the equipment and not to frighten the child. They brought food, water, sweets for the kids. Our men were returned, they could not prove their guilt.

A little earlier, the Kadyrovites walked in front of this group of military men and miraculously passed our house. The commander said that if they entered, we would not be there. They take revenge for the previously broken column and do not even understand who to kill. Lucky.

The next three days passed in the cold, we sat in the basement in terrible fear and under the sound of shelling. People who fled from Gostomel were brought into the house. 15 people. We tried to feed everyone. If not for my dad, everyone would be hungry.
On the 10th, we heard on the radio that a green corridor was opening at nine o'clock, we realized that we had to get out. They asked if it was possible to take the child out. They said that by car - no, execution. We decided to go on foot. A stroller, a white flag, a minimum of things. The corpses of civilians (how many of them are there), which have been lying for more than a day, went around in a stroller, I didn’t explain anything to the child, because I didn’t know how.

There are Russians in almost every yard. Suddenly the command “stop!” sounds, and we freeze with our hands up (later we noticed that our daughter also raised her little hands). They missed two posts, they don’t let them in at the third one, they turn back, they say that the corridor will open from 15:00. Despair. We're back, we're waiting. Another attempt. You can't look back, only forward. A car with civilians flies out in front of us, hits a mine and is blown up, there is almost nothing left of the car, the path ahead is mined. Men in front, me with a stroller in the back. Through mines, corpses, broken equipment, then through the swamp we make our way to freedom.

Finally, our soldiers met us and handed us over to the guys from the Ministry of Emergency Situations, we got into buses and drove off. We arrive at a Russian checkpoint and wait four hours. The news is bad. They don't let us in, we'll have to spend the night on the bus right on the road. Few people know about these humanitarian corridors at these checkpoints, and they infuriate them.

In the meantime, it is getting dark, and rockets begin to fly over us. We find the basement, women and children there, on the street -10. A sewer burst in the basement, and we sit in this stench, horror and cold until the morning.

In the morning, again, our military agree to let us through, and this time we are lucky. The last push, an enemy checkpoint, my heart skips a beat, they can fire at any moment, and we drive into the territory controlled by our troops.

While we are safe, but the psyche is blown up, we have changed, nothing will be the same as before. We try to communicate normally, even joke a little, but when you close your eyes, you immediately see a road full of corpses, and how we freeze with our hands up, waiting for their decision.

The fact that we evacuated is a blessing. But my soul and thoughts are with Bucha and with all hero cities, with people who are trapped, with children who should not be involved in the war at all.”

Maria Dabizhe

80 years old, resident of Bucha, in an interview with The Times.

Russian servicemen came to my house. I asked them what they were doing here. They told me, "We're just trying to do our job."

US reaction

US President Joe Biden has called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be tried as a war criminal. Meduza.

“You saw what happened in Bucha,” Biden said, again calling Putin a “war criminal.” He had previously said this about the Russian president in mid-March. The Kremlin then called "unacceptable and unforgivable such rhetoric of the head of state, whose bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world."

The President of the United States also told reporters that he would seek additional sanctions against Russia after reports of what happened in the territories of Ukraine, which were under the control of the Russian military.

“We must continue to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs to fight. And we must collect all the details (of what happened in the Kiev region) for a real war crimes trial, ”Biden added.

At the same time, the American leader refused to call the incident a genocide.

The brutal massacre of civilians shocked the whole world

Footage of unarmed civilians being killed - perhaps the most terrifying photographs of this war - is being discussed all over the world, reports Meduza.

Josep Borrell

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

“The massacre in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities will be included in the list of atrocities committed on European soil. The Russian authorities are responsible for these atrocities committed during their occupation. Those responsible will be held accountable.”

Andrzej Duda

President of Poland.

“Criminals should be called criminals, brought to justice and sentenced to punishment in court. Pictures from Bucha refute the belief that a compromise must be sought at any cost. In fact, the defenders of Ukraine need three things above all else: weapons, weapons, and even more weapons.”

Justin trudeau

Prime Minister of Canada.

“We strongly condemn the killing of civilians in Ukraine, continue to strive to hold the Russian regime accountable, and will continue to do our best to support the people of Ukraine. Those responsible for these egregious and horrific attacks will be held accountable.”

Yair Lapid

Israeli Foreign Minister.

“It is impossible to remain indifferent to the terrifying pictures from the city of Bucha near Kiev after the departure of the Russian army. Deliberately causing harm to civilians is a war crime and I strongly condemn it.”

Fumio Kisida

Prime Minister of Japan, quotes from a press conference in Tokyo on April 4, 2022.

Kisida called the violence against civilians in the suburbs of Kyiv "a violation of international law." He also said that "Japan will firmly do what it must" by cooperating with the international community in possible further sanctions against Russia. “We must strongly condemn human rights issues and actions that violate international law,” Kishida added.

Jacinda Ardern

Prime Minister of New Zealand, quotes from a press conference in Wellington on April 4, 2022.

“Russia must answer to the whole world for what it has done. Of course, what we as the international community are seeing in Bucha is evidence of war crimes committed by Russia. Ultimately, it is up to the International Criminal Court to try Russia for war crimes, but the evidence is there and New Zealand supports prosecutors in gathering that evidence and holding Russia accountable.”

Alexander Rodnyansky

Film producer.

“When I saw these shots, I was speechless. And the right to talk about "Russian culture". Like everyone else who has anything to do with her. About cynical and vile politicians, propagandists and the military, about those whom they brought up, created, fostered - jubilant gopota - everything is clear about them.

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Now, about culture. About the one they were proud of. to which they belonged. "Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric," Theodor Adorno seems to have said so. After Bucha, one can no longer talk about Russian culture. She did not save the Russian people from barbarism, from atrocities and animalization. She is guilty. All involved are guilty.
There is a long road of rebirth ahead. And repentance. It's too late to ask for forgiveness. And no one. They were killed, raped and thrown into pits in Bucha, Irpen, Gostomel…”

Oxymorone

Rapper, from the announcement of the Russians Against War concert in Berlin.

“Today is April 4, and the full scale of war crimes that are committed by the Russian state on the territory of Ukraine becomes apparent. At the same time, we all tend to get used to a constant stream of news, including the most terrible. It seems that nothing can be influenced, but of course it is not. On the one hand, any words and any help are not enough, but I believe that right now it is important for everyone to do their best to the best of their ability.”

Julia Aug

Actress.

“I wonder how supporters and supporters will justify everything that happened in Bucha in their heads? How? How propagandists will do it, I have a rough idea, I'm not talking about them now. I'm talking about those who think that everything is ambiguous and that Russia is for peace.”

Marat Gelman

Gallery owner, curator.

“This is no longer Putin. Atrocities are already a personal crime of every military man. With every day of the war, people are losing their human appearance more and more. We must stop. Hey, you understand that in any case, these people will return to Russia already with the taste of the blood of a defenseless person, with the confidence that they can have everything that everything should belong to them. They will come to schools to tell about their exploits to your children.”

Russian soldiers did not hesitate to take “gifts” for their families

On April 3, the Belarusian Gayun team posted on Anton Motolko's YouTube channel video, which was made by the online camera of the CDEK courier service in Mozyr. On the footage, men in the form of Russian servicemen send parcels. They have TVs, video cards, hoods. The courier service confirmed that the footage is indeed from their department.

A 3-hour CCTV footage in this unit, which was recorded from 11:30 am to 15:00 pm on April 2, 2022, shows soldiers sending the following items: TVs, 4 boxes of AKAI air conditioners, an electric scooter, alcohol, video cards, hoods, car batteries and more. In one of the moments you can see a trunk from the Ukrainian shopping center "Epicenter".

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