The killing of more than 1,000 civilians in the Kyiv region by Russian soldiers, about 500 of whom lived in the small town of Bucha, shocked the entire world. A distinctive feature of this massacre was that the killings did not occur instantaneously. Russian military personnel killed peaceful Ukrainians over several weeks in March 2022. Most victims were shot, dozens were tortured before death, and there were cases of rape.
To this day, there is no unanimous opinion on the reasons for this violence and what the position of Russian commanders was regarding the actions of their subordinates. Only one thing is known: the officers not only did not prevent the unmotivated violence against the civilians of Bucha but also committed murders themselves.
Russian propaganda and the Kremlin’s policy on the Ukrainian issue have one feature. It suggests that the Russian-speaking population of Donbas are ethnic Russians, while the Ukrainian-speaking population is supposedly hostile to Russia. Obviously, this influenced the motivation of Russian military actions against the locals. Moreover, the occupiers were embittered by the fact that a few days before the occupation of Bucha, Ukrainian forces decimated several Russian military columns. One was burned at the approaches to Irpin, another in Bucha itself, on Vokzalna Street. The version that the killings in Bucha were ordered to suppress any resistance from the local population, regardless of civilian casualties, should not be excluded.
Mass killings of men, women, and children in the Kyiv region can be divided into several groups:
- Random shootings of civilians who were driving or walking within sight of Russian military personnel. This group includes not only those killed on the streets of Bucha but also those trying to evacuate to safe areas. Dozens of motorists, most of whom were killed on the Zhytomyr highway, fell victim to these crimes. They were trying to leave Kyiv towards Western Ukraine but did not know that Russian troops were stationed along the M-03 highway. At least ten civilians were shot dead near the Warsaw highway close to Vorzel. The Russians were aware that they were committing crimes: after the killings, they burned the cars and bodies to hide evidence of the murders.
- Unmotivated killings of civilians. This category includes cases where Russian military personnel killed men, women, and even teenagers during house searches or when trying to leave their homes. There are numerous eyewitness accounts of Bucha residents being killed simply for going out for food or firewood. Some were killed by snipers, who entertained themselves or honed their skills in this way.
- Killings of civilians, predominantly men, on suspicion of pro-Ukrainian sentiments. Already on March 4, almost immediately after the occupation of Bucha began, Russian military personnel started searching for citizens based on pre-prepared lists. They checked every house and conducted filtration, looking for former Ukrainian army servicemen and civilians who supported the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Those found were executed, many victims were tortured before being killed. The Russians killed anyone they found suspicious. For example, Bucha resident Pavlo Vlasenko was detained because he wore military-style trousers belonging to his son, a keeper. When Vlasenko’s body was later found, it bore signs of burns. On March 12, another Bucha resident, Ilya Navalny, was shot in the head. He was not affiliated with the Ukrainian military or local political activists. The Russians simply disliked his surname because it was the same as that of Putin’s longtime foe Alexei Navalny.
- Killings committed during looting or after rapes. At least two women were known to have been killed after being raped by Russian soldiers in Bucha. In total, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, by the end of 2022, 62 cases of rape committed by the occupiers were recorded.
On August 8, 2022, the official Ukrainian authorities published the number of civilians killed in the city of Bucha: 458 bodies (419 with signs of shooting, torture, or violent injuries) and 39 bodies, likely to have died during the occupation from natural causes. Among them, 366 were men, 86 women. The gender of five victims was unidentifiable due to the poor condition of the body remains. Nine were children. Fifty bodies remain unidentified along with body parts and ashes.
Besides Bucha, killings of civilians during the occupation were recorded in other settlements of the Kyiv region. For instance, in the small town of Borodyanka, 162 residents died during the occupation (48 of whom were found under the rubble of buildings bombed by Russian aviation) and 28 went missing. Among those killed in Borodyanka were many young men, shot in the head.
The Russian authorities’ reaction to the disclosure of information about mass killings in Bucha was predictably cynical. On April 3, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense declared that during the time Bucha was under the control of the Armed Forces of Russia, not a single local resident suffered from any violent actions.
After some time, as photographs of corpses on the streets of Bucha quickly spread across world media sites, the Kremlin was forced to present a new version of events. On April 12, Vladimir Putin claimed that all images and videos of the alleged dead in Bucha are fake, “a setup by the West.” Concurrently, pro-Kremlin media concocted another version: the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” wrote that the killings of civilians in Bucha did occur, but they were committed by Ukrainian nationalists, after Russian troops left the city.
It’s probably unnecessary to say that this stream of nonsense was completely refuted in the course of several independent investigations, including those by journalists from The New York Times and CNN.
The mass killings in Bucha and other towns and villages in the Kyiv region showed Ukrainian society and government representatives that this war aims to exterminate the Ukrainian nation. Without any doubt, a Bucha on a thousand times larger scale awaited Kyiv in case of occupation. Fortunately, thanks to the heroism of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the residents of the capital avoided this.