The Bucha massacre ( uk, Бучанська різанина, Buchanska rizanyna) was the mass murder of
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
civilians by
Russian Armed Forces
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (, ), commonly referred to as the Russian Armed Forces, are the military forces of Russia. In terms of active-duty personnel, they are the world's fifth-largest military force, with at least two m ...
during the
fight for and occupation of the Ukrainian city of
Bucha amid the
Russian invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...
. Photographic and video evidence of the massacre emerged on 1 April 2022 after Russian forces withdrew from the city.
According to local authorities, 458 bodies have been recovered from the town, including 9 children under the age of 18; among the victims, 419 people were killed by weapons and 39 appeared to have died of natural causes, possibly related to the occupation. The
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nati ...
documented the unlawful killings, including summary executions, of at least 50 civilians in Bucha. Photos showed corpses of civilians, lined up with their hands bound behind their backs, shot at
point-blank range
Point-blank range is any distance over which a certain firearm can hit a target without the need to compensate for bullet drop, and can be adjusted over a wide range of distances by sighting in the firearm. If the bullet leaves the barrel para ...
, which ostensibly gave proof that
summary execution
A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial. Executions as the result of summary justice (such as a drumhead court-martial) are sometimes include ...
s had taken place. An inquiry by
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government funded organization that broadcasts and reports news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East where it says tha ...
reported the use of a basement beneath a campground as a
.
Many bodies were found mutilated and burnt,
and girls as young as fourteen reported being raped by Russian soldiers.
Ukraine has asked the
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals ...
to investigate what happened in Bucha as part of its ongoing investigation of the invasion in order to determine whether a series of
Russian war crimes
Russian war crimes since 1991 are the violations of the law of war, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Conventions, consisting of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of genocide, which the official ar ...
or
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
were committed.
Russian authorities have denied responsibility and instead claimed that Ukraine faked footage of the event or staged the killings itself as a
false flag
A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misr ...
operation, and have claimed that the footage and photographs of dead bodies were "fake news".
These assertions by Russian authorities have been debunked as false by various groups and media organizations around the world. Eyewitness accounts from residents of Bucha said that the Russian Armed Forces carried out the killings.
Background
As part of the
2022 invasion of Ukraine, the
Russian military
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (, ), commonly referred to as the Russian Armed Forces, are the military forces of Russia. In terms of active-duty personnel, they are the world's fifth-largest military force, with at least two m ...
entered Ukraine from the southern border of
Belarus
Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by R ...
. One of the initial moves was a push towards the Ukrainian capital
Kyiv
Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...
, as part of which a
huge column of military vehicles moved north of Kyiv. On 27 February 2022, Russian advance forces moved into the city of Bucha, making it one of the first outlying areas of Kyiv taken by Russian forces.
According to
Ukrainian military intelligence, Russian forces occupying Bucha included the
64th Motor Rifle Brigade
The 64th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade (Military Unit Number 51460) is a motorized infantry brigade of the Russian Ground Forces, which may have been "destroyed in combat" after being deployed to eastern Ukraine in mid-2022. Based at Knyaze ...
headed by Lt. Col.
Azatbek Omurbekov
Azatbek Asanbekovich Omurbekov (; born 17 September 1983) is a Kyrgyz-born Russian colonel who reportedly heads the 64th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, a unit suspected of committing war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha. He has been dubbe ...
, under the
35th Combined Arms Army
The 35th Combined Arms Red Banner Army is a field army of the Russian Ground Forces. The army was first formed in July 1941 with the Far Eastern Front. After spending most of World War II guarding the border in Primorsky Krai, the army fought in t ...
.
In late March, prior to the Russian retreat from Kyiv,
Prosecutor General of Ukraine
The prosecutor general of Ukraine (also procurator general of Ukraine, uk, Генеральний прокурор України) heads the system of official prosecution in courts known as the Office of the Prosecutor General ( uk, Офіс ...
Iryna Venediktova
Iryna Valentynivna Venediktova ( uk, Ірина Валентинівна Венедіктова; born 21 September 1978) is a Ukrainian politician, academic, and lawyer, previously a prosecutor general of Ukraine from March 2020 to July 2022. S ...
stated that Ukrainian prosecutors had collected evidence of 2,500 suspected cases of
war crimes committed by Russia during the invasion and had identified "several hundred suspects".
Matilda Bogner, the head of the
UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) is a group of human rights monitors established in Ukraine in 2014 by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Creation and aims
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring ...
, also raised concerns about the precise documentation of civilian casualties specifically in regions and cities under heavy fire, highlighting the lack of electricity and reliable communications.
Under attack by the Ukrainian military, Russian troops in the Bucha area retreated north as part of the general Russian retreat from the Kyiv area. Ukrainian forces entered Bucha on 1 April 2022.
Reports
During the Russian offensive
According to ''
The Kyiv Independent
''The Kyiv Independent'' is an English-language Ukrainian online newspaper founded in 2021 by former staff of the ''Kyiv Post'' and media consultancy Jnomics Media. The online newspaper is also active on Twitter.
Founding
In October 2021, disp ...
'', on 4 March, Russian forces killed three unarmed Ukrainian civilians who were driving back from delivering food to a dog shelter.
At around 7:15 AM on 5 March, a pair of cars carrying two families trying to escape were spotted by Russian soldiers as the vehicles turned onto Chkalova Street. Russian forces opened fire on the convoy, killing a man in the second vehicle. The front car was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire, instantly killing two children and their mother.
The town's mayor,
Anatoliy Fedoruk, had told media outlets about war crimes in the city prior to the town's recapture. On 7 March he had compared the situation in Bucha to a "nightmare" in an interview with the
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
, telling the reporters that "we can't even gather up the bodies because the shelling from heavy weapons doesn't stop day or night. Dogs are pulling apart the bodies on the city streets." In a 28 March interview with
Adnkronos
Adnkronos is an Italian news agency.
History and profile
Adnkronos was established in 1963 by a merger of two agencies, ''Kronos'' (founded in 1951) and ''Agenzia Di Notizie'' (founded in 1959). The agency is based in Rome.
Adnkronos is owned ...
, Fedoruk said Russian forces were guilty of
crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...
. He evoked "a plan of terror against the civilian population" and claimed that "here in Bucha we see all the horrors we heard about as crimes committed by the Nazis during Second World War".
After the Russian withdrawal
Following the Russian withdrawal, video footage was posted to social media on 1 April 2022, showing mass civilian casualties.
According to the Mayor Fedoruk, "hundreds of Russian soldiers" were also among the bodies found in the region.
Subsequently, further evidence emerged which appeared to show war crimes committed by Russian forces while they occupied the region. Soldiers of the Ukrainian
Territorial Defense Forces said they had found eighteen mutilated bodies of men, women, and children in a
summer camp
A summer camp or sleepaway camp is a supervised program for children conducted during the summer months in some countries. Children and adolescents who attend summer camp are known as ''campers''. Summer school is usually a part of the academ ...
's basement in Zabuchchya, near Bucha.
Footage released by the Ukrainian army appeared to show a
in the basement. One of the soldiers said that some of the bodies had cut-off ears or pulled out teeth, and that the bodies had been removed a day before the interview.
Corpses of other killed civilians were left in the road.
A report by
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government funded organization that broadcasts and reports news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East where it says tha ...
, an American state-funded media organization, described the basement as an "execution cellar" used by Russian forces.
A report published by ''The Kyiv Independent'' included a photo and information about one man and two or three naked women under a blanket whose bodies Russian soldiers tried to burn on the side of a road before fleeing.
Ukrainian officials said the
women had been raped and the bodies burnt.
Journalists writing for ''The Kyiv Independent'' consider that photos indicated that Russians forces had singled out and killed Ukrainian civilian men in an organised fashion, with many bodies having been found with their hands tied behind their backs.
Many of the victims appeared to have been going about their daily routines, carrying shopping bags.
Footage showed civilians dead with their hands bound. Other footage showed a dead man next to a bicycle. Journalists entering the city themselves discovered the bodies of more than a dozen people in civilian clothes.
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
, the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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released video documentation of numerous dead bodies of civilians in the streets and yards in Bucha, some of them with tied arms or legs.
said of the 20 bodies on the street, some had been shot in the temple and some bodies had been run over by a tank. On 2 April, an AFP reporter stated he had seen at least twenty bodies of male civilians lying in the streets of Bucha, with two of the bodies having tied hands.
Fedoruk said that these individuals had all been shot in the back of the head.
journalists saw charred bodies on a residential street near a playground in Bucha, including one with a bullet hole in the skull, and a burned body of a child. On the same date, ''
of corpses. The bodies of at least one of those killed was turned into a trap and mined with tripwires. Villagers who were asked to help to identify a beheaded body related that drunken Russian soldiers told them of carrying out sadistic acts against Ukrainians.
By 9 April, Ukrainian forensic investigators had begun recovering bodies from mass graves, such as at the church of Andrew the Apostle.
On 21 April,
published an extensive report that summarized their own investigation in Bucha, implicating Russian troops in
, and torture. It also urged Ukrainian authorities to preserve evidence and cooperate with the
to bolster future war crime prosecutions.
s in them. Unnamed eyewitnesses in Bucha had previously reported the firing of flechette rounds by Russian artillery, using shells that carry up to 8,000 flechettes each, according to ''The Guardian''. The use of flechettes in urban areas is a violation of
.
Residents and the mayor of the city said that the victims had been killed by Russian troops. They indicated many of the survivors had been hiding from the Russians in basements, too scared to come out. Some of them had no light or electricity for weeks, using candles for heating water and cooking. They came out of hiding only when it was clear the Russians had left, welcoming the arrival of Ukrainian troops.
...