Feet tied and bullet in the head: a murder in Bucha, Ukraine

SENSITIVE MATERIAL. THIS PICTURE MAY OFFEND OR DISTURB The body of a man, with his feet bound, who according to local police was killed by Russian soldiers, lies on the ground, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Bucha, kyiv region, Ukraine, April 6. , 2022. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

BUCHA, Ukraine, April 6 (Reuters) – With a rope tied around his feet and a charred hole in his forehead, a dead man lies in the bushes next to a train track on the outskirts of the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The brooding figure, its sallow yellow flesh like a wax figure, lies surrounded by fallen brown leaves. A few meters (yards) away, the body of another victim lies in the brush.

“Don’t touch the body. It may be mined,” said a policeman, who pointed to the place where the body lay but asked not to be identified by name.

Bucha, 37 km (23 miles) northwest of kyiv, was occupied by Russian troops for more than a month after the February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

When Russian forces withdrew last week, they left civilians dead in the streets of Bucha, inside buildings and buried in shallow graves.

Local authorities say Russian forces killed more than 300 people in Bucha alone, with around 50 of them executed.

The police said residents of Bucha had buried another five bodies under an unmarked mound of earth that Reuters passed by. Reuters could not immediately verify his account.

Since arriving in Bucha on Sunday, Reuters has seen the remains of at least five victims who were shot in the head. One had his hands tied behind his back. Read more

The slain man seen by Reuters on Wednesday, dressed in blue jeans and a black winter jacket, lay 100 meters from a small graveyard. Reuters was unable to identify the man or determine who had killed him.

Witnesses in the town – which has been heavily bombed; their facades ripped and blackened – have recounted details of what they said were several other extrajudicial killings at the hands of Russians. Reuters has not been able to independently verify their accounts.

The Ukrainian government accused Russia of genocide and war crimes. The Kremlin dismisses the accusations as propaganda and says its forces are not targeting civilians.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council on Tuesday that the abuse allegations were lies. He said that while Bucha was under Russian control “not a single civilian suffered any kind of violence.”

On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying that all photos and videos released by Ukrainian authorities alleging “crimes” committed by Russian troops in Bucha were a “provocation.”

CHECHEN SOLDIER

In another incident nearby, through a small forest, builder Eduard Karpenko recounted how he saw one of his neighbors walking away to be shot by a Russian soldier.

He said the victim, Oleksandr Yeremich, was a 43-year-old member of the Territorial Defense Forces, the military reserves of Ukraine’s armed forces. Karpenko showed Reuters a copy of the man’s passport, but the news agency was unable to independently verify other details of his account.

Karpenko said the man was taken away from his home by a soldier who two Russian soldiers watching said came from Chechnya, a region in southern Russia that has deployed forces to Ukraine to support Russia.

The soldier marched the man out of sight, to the end of a wooden fence that flanked the forest, and then four shots rang out, Karpenko said.

“They took him to the end of the gate and shot him, the last shot to the head,” Karpenko said, holding his arms up as if being led away.

Two men alongside Karpenko, who declined to be identified, confirmed they also saw Yeremich walk away and heard the gunshots.

Karpenko said he and the two men waited until nightfall, as ordered by Russian soldiers, before venturing out to retrieve the body.

“We covered him with one blanket, then another and dragged him into the grave. There was a lot of blood,” Karpenko said.

He said the body was buried nearby in a garden, the spot marked with a long wooden stake and metal frame shaped like a coffin, which was seen by Reuters.

Karpenko and the other two men hung a baseball cap from a branch at the site where they said the shooting occurred.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin ally, said in a statement on February 26 that Chechen forces would fight in Ukraine as part of Russia’s “special military operation” to demilitarize the country. Reuters could not determine if they were operating in Bucha.

additional reporting by Ivan Lubysh-Kirdey and Alkis Konstantinidis, editing by Silvia Aloisi, Alexandra Hudson

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