Bucha Residents Describe 'Systematic' Killings By Russian Troops

Executed civilians in Bucha, Ukraine. Murdered by the Russian military.

4.4.22
BUCHA, Ukraine -- Residents of this suburb of Kyiv told RFE/RL they managed to survive the "systematic" killing of the town's population by Russian troops that until recently occupied the area. Images showing the bodies of dead civilians in Bucha, which Russian forces occupied in early March and left around April 1, have emerged in the last couple of days and have prompted international condemnation of Russia, including accusations of genocide and war crimes. Several local residents told RFE/RL that what they saw after they emerged from their houses after Ukrainian forces recaptured the town was "horrific," with the bodies of dozens of civilians who had been shot dead lying in the streets. One man said a Russian sniper deliberately killed several people in the area, including one of his relatives. "A sniper started shooting in the area on March 5,” the man said. “When we left our house before the curfew time that day, a sniper killed my son-in-law. After that, it all started. They were shooting at everyone who was out,” the man said. Another resident said he witnessed Russian soldiers killing three civilians by shooting them for no clear reason.

"After shooting one of them, they also threw a grenade on his body. We buried his parts later…. It was horrible," the man said, adding that his own brother was shot dead when he was walking to a bomb shelter on March 5. "It was a system,” the man said. “They were killing people systematically. I personally heard how one sniper was boasting that he ‘offed’ two people he saw in apartment windows.... There was no need. There was no military justification to kill. It was just torturing civilians. On other blocks, people were really tortured. They were found with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the back of the head.” Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said on April 2 that about 300 locals had been killed during the Russian occupation of the town and that some 280 bodies had been discovered in a mass grave. The Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office said on April 3 that prosecutors investigating possible war crimes by Russia have found 410 bodies in towns outside of Kyiv and that 140 of them had been examined.

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One is lost for words.

Rogue Valley said:

Bucha Residents Describe 'Systematic' Killings By Russian Troops

Residents of this suburb of Kyiv told RFE/RL they managed to survive the "systematic" killing of the town's population by Russian troops that until recently occupied the area.

www.rferl.org

Executed civilians in Bucha, Ukraine. Murdered by the Russian military.




One is lost for words.

'They Killed People Systematically': Bucha Residents Describe War Crimes By Expelled Russian Forces

Images of dozens of bodies lying in the streets of the village of Bucha, near Kyiv, have been seen around the world, prompting accusations of war crimes against Russian forces. RFE/RL correspondent Levko Stek traveled there on April 3 shortly after its liberation by Ukrainian forces.

www.rferl.org

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In my 40 days of my immersion in Ukraine news, I thought I'd seen the limits of Putin's Russian barbarity - or at least I hoped I'd had. Then I saw Bucha - a war crime of systematic murder that will rival, if not surpass, the infamous NAZI reprisal on Lidice in former Czechoslovakia.

As with Lidice, the occupiers shot the men of the town, executed with their hands often tied behind their backs - the only difference here being that hundreds were murdered outright in Bucha (including children), whereas in Lidice the Germans shipped the women and most of the children to concentration camps, where a portion of women died and most of the children.

But the numbers of dead are not substantially different, with Russians having the edge in total murdered. And similarly, both Lidice and Bucha were mostly erased as villages, intentionally.

So one wonders, how many more Lidice's or Bucha's are necessary before the western powers decide that, just perhaps, the Ukrainians are worth saving by providing a handful of planes or a few dozen Marder's? How many score of hospitals and schools and civilian bomb shelters must be leveled by intentional mass murder before the leaders of NATO, we will no longer tolerate these mass killings and will act decisively? How many more 100s of thousands Ukrainians must be loaded on trains to the far east in a campaign of ethnic cleansing before Nato's leaders find the courage to provide a cruise missile, or western tank, or a western SAM system to the innocents?

The refugee crisis continues to grow, now 4 million to other countries and up to 10 million internally, and yet after Bucha what suffices as action? More bleating's for ineffective sanctions and the usual cries of anguish and handwringing.

Putin and we are now fully aware of military impotency compared to NATO, and his empty threats of "hypersonic" weapons. His promise to bring down the world if Russia falls has lost it's power to intimidate. He knows, as we, he has crossed the line. His lies that Ukraine or NATO did this can no longer be stomached.

It's time to see our leaders rise to the occasion.

Lidice or Bucha... save your pity.

Do something.