(Bucha, Kyiv region, April 4, 2022. Photo: Angelina Kariakina / Suspilne)
Russian military personnel on heavy vehicles reached Bucha in the morning of February 27. On the same day, a rocket hit a residential building, and Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk reported the first dead. On March 31, Russian troops left Bucha. Suspilne visited the city after 33 days of occupation.
(Warning: the material contains sensitive content)
Graves of local residents near one of the residential complexes of Bucha. According to a local resident, two of the eight graves contain men who were killed by gunfire near the house where they were walking their dogs.
Church of St. Andrew the first-called in Bucha. In the courtyard, local residents buried the bodies of dead or killed Bucha residents since March 10.
On April 3, there is a queue for humanitarian aid near the Central City Hospital in Bucha. There are mostly elderly people who stayed in Bucha for more than a month in the queue. There is no water, gas, or electricity in the city. Food has just started to be delivered. But most grocery stores were destroyed in early March.
Help is brought by volunteers, Territorial Defence fighters, and the militaries. In the queue, people say that they lived either in basements or in their homes, and went out into the yard to cook food on fire. There is no gas in the city, the water has to be boiled.
A few days ago, the bodies of executed civilians were lying on the streets of the city. They have already been collected and taken out. Next to the church is a mass grave, where 57 people are buried, - says the head of the funeral service of the Bucha community Serhii Kaplychny.
"First burials in the city began on March 10 with the permission of the Russian military. The nature of injuries from which people died is either bullet or shrapnel. As of tomorrow, we have 20 more addresses where we will pick up the bodies," - says Serhii Kaplychny.
On April 3, the bodies of 15 victims were collected on Yablonska Street. People were shot with their hands tied.
Local resident Larysa did not leave the city since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
"The worst part was on February 27, because I watched it all over again, how it all started. I saw a column of vehicles: a tank is coming, followed by ACVs, cars. My son counted 72 cars together. And they went to Irpen. But it is good that the bridge there was blocked by reinforced concrete blocks, bulldozers, and they began to turn around,”- Larysa remembers.
The Russian military, after occupying the territory of the city, raided local residents with searches. They kicked Larysa's family out to live in a barn, and occupied their house. "These two days we were just lucky that no one shot at them, otherwise we wouldn't have been here," - the woman says. "When I heard about the liberation of the city, I felt joy, of course. I told everyone and I say: Ukraine will never be defeated by russian nazis, and even more so, no matter how many of them there are!"
On Vokzalna Street, which leads to Irpin, there are still destroyed vehicles of the occupier. People continue to live in houses along it.
They say that the worst thing was when there was a battle right in front of their houses: "everything around was burning." Then the invaders came. "It was the contact line. They fired from this street on a deviation of 100 meters back and forward. Everything is broken there. And all the way to Irpin. People say there are 50% of broken houses and institutions in Irpin", - says Serhii.
Bucha School No. 3. "Pskov paratroopers" (243 Guards Airborne Assault Regiment) could stand here. Suspilne found abandoned ammunition marked military unit 74268 in Pskov, where the regiment is stationed.
Dry ration of the Russian military.
The New York Times studied satellite images of Bucha, Kyiv region. The bodies of the murdered residents have been lying on the streets since mid-March. A mass grave in Bucha appeared on March 10, satellite images show.
This breaks the theses of Russian propaganda that photos and videos from Bucha are supposedly staged for "Ukrainian provocation". In particular, the Russian Defense Ministry said that during the territory's stay under the control of the Russian armed forces, not a single local resident was injured, and photos and videos from Bucha are "staged by Kyiv regime for the Western media."
Chevron of the Russian military in Bucha.
