Bucha massacre

The Bucha massacre ( uk, Бучанська різанина, Buchanska rizanyna) was the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians by Russian Armed Forces during the fight for and occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 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 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, which ostensibly gave proof that summary executions had taken place. An inquiry by Radio Free Europe reported the use of a basement beneath a campground as a torture chamber. 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 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 or crimes against humanity 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 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 entered Ukraine from the southern border of Belarus. One of the initial moves was a push towards the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, 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 headed by Lt. Col. Azatbek Omurbekov, under the 35th Combined Arms Army.

In late March, prior to the Russian retreat from Kyiv, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova 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, 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'', 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, 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, Fedoruk said Russian forces were guilty of crimes against humanity. 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's basement in Zabuchchya, near Bucha.

Footage released by the Ukrainian army appeared to show a torture chamber 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, 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, the BBC
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