The British branch of the international human rights organization Amnesty International published a report documenting dozens of cases of civilians being killed in Bucha, Borodyanka and other Ukrainian settlements as a result of shelling and bombing, as well as directly by Russian military personnel.

The report is based on eyewitness accounts, detailed examination of evidence such as ammunition fragments, bomb, shell and missile impact sites, as well as documents left behind by the Russian military itself.

“It is vital that all those responsible, including the commanders, be held accountable,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Amnesty International has published a report that collected dozens of eyewitness accounts of Russian army war crimes in Bucha, Borodyanka and many other towns and villages in Ukraine.

During the 12 days of the investigation, Amnesty staff traveled to Ukrainian cities where the crimes were committed and interviewed 45 people who personally witnessed or have first-hand knowledge of the murders of relatives or neighbors by Russian soldiers and another 39 people who survived or saw shelling of residential buildings in Borodyanka 1 and March 2, which resulted in the death of at least 40 civilians, the destruction of 8 residential buildings and severe damage to surrounding buildings.

A single air raid on 359 Central Street on March 2 alone killed at least 23 people, most of them hiding in the basement.

“I left my apartment to work in the garage, and my wife was about to take the elderly neighbors to the basement,” Vasily Yaroshenko, a resident of house 359, told Amnesty. “When I was about 150 meters from the house, I heard a huge explosion. a failure in the middle of the building, the entire middle part of the house collapsed just above the place where there was a basement in which people were hiding. My wife Galina was among the dead.”

According to human rights activists, there were no military targets in or near the buildings that were hit, although there were reports that armed men periodically fired at Russian military equipment from or near these buildings.

However, as Amnesty International notes, deliberately shelling residential buildings or delivering disproportionate strikes is a war crime.

Amnesty investigators found that in the city of Bucha, between March 4 and 19, at least five men were shot without trial by the Russian military.

One of the dead was the father of two children, 43-year-old Evgen Petrashenko, who was killed in his own home on March 4. According to his widow, Tatyana, who was hiding in the basement at the time, Yevgen went to help his neighbors while Russian soldiers ransacked the entire house. His body was discovered the next day.

“Yevgen was lying dead in the kitchen, he was shot in the back,” said Tatiana Petrashenko, who was allowed into the apartment by the Russian military. “His body lay there until March 10, when we were able to bury him in a temporary grave right in the courtyard of the house.” .

At the murder scene, Amnesty investigators found two bullets and three shell casings from the distinctive 7N12 armor-piercing round used by some Russian special forces, including units of the 104th Airborne Division, which are known to be stationed in Bucha.

In towns and villages adjacent to Bucha, investigators collected additional evidence of killings, including summary executions, often with the victims’ hands tied and some of the bodies bearing signs of torture.

Sometimes the victims were people trying to leave the war zone in cars.

“There were only civilians in the convoy. There were children in almost all the cars. When we reached the forest belt, shots rang out, first single, then in bursts,” Aleksey Sychevsky, whose wife and father were killed as a result of such shelling, told Amnesty. in the first car, and the whole column stopped. We were in the second car, and also got up. And then six or seven bullets hit our car at once. My father was killed on the spot with a bullet in the head, shrapnel hit my wife, and the rebec was also wounded. ”

Amnesty investigators, who visited Bucha, Borodyanka and neighboring towns and villages in April, note that many relatives of the victims, whose remains were recovered from the ruins or mass graves, were dissatisfied with the process of identification and the way the bodies of the deceased were treated.

Relatives complained that the process of exhumation and identification was chaotic, they were not notified in a timely manner about the results, and in some cases the identifications were carried out with errors.

“The crimes committed by Russian troops and documented by us include both indiscriminate strikes and deliberate killings of civilians,” the report quoted Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard, who traveled with investigators to Ukraine, as saying.

“We met with families whose relatives died in these horrific attacks and whose lives were forever changed by the Russian invasion.”

“We support their demand for justice and call on the Ukrainian authorities, the ICC and other organizations to ensure the safety of evidence that would allow future war crimes trials to be held. It is vital that all those responsible, including the command, be held accountable,” the statement said. .

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