NYT publishes an investigation into Russian military crimes in Bucha

The New York Times published the results of the investigation, conducted by 8 journalists (video and text). 

The journalists interviewed eyewitnesses to the events of March 2022, when the town was under Russian occupation, and collected other evidence: telephone intercepts, radio conversations, surveillance footage, videos from government sources, etc.

As the authors of the investigation found out, 36 people were killed by Russian soldiers on Yablunska Street in Bucha. Having spoken to family members, friends and colleagues of the victims, as well as using satellite images, mobile phone videos, social media posts and text messages, journalists traced the last moments of victims’ lives and published their stories.

A review of dozens of death certificates for the victims on Yablunska Street revealed that most of them had been killed by gunfire. In other cases, the bodies were so burned that forensic experts were unable to determine the cause of death.

The outlet claims that the perpetrators of the massacre on this street were Russian paratroopers from the 234th Air Assault Regiment from Pskov under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Artem Gorodilov. 

The journalists concluded that the killings on Yablunska Street, which was nicknamed "the road of death", were not accidental, but were part of a plan to further advance Russian troops towards Kyiv. During the "cleansing" of the city, the Russian military searched houses, looking for men of fighting age. Members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces were sent for interrogation to the headquarters, arranged in house №144, and then executed. Russian soldiers also killed random passers-by those who went out to buy food or tried to get home. 

The authors of the NYT investigation identified at least 22 Russian soldiers of the 234th regiment. In the intercepted conversations, the Russian military used the call signs Flakon, Astra and Uran. The first two call signs, as journalists found out, belong to the commanders of battalion tactical groups of the 234th regiment. The call sign Uran is that of the regiment commander Artem Gorodilov.

The journalists found the names of the soldiers by analyzing the calls from the phones that the Russian soldiers took from the residents of Bucha. They identified at least 16 soldiers who called Russia from the phones of the local residents they killed. Their identities were confirmed by matching them with social media profiles. The authors of the investigation contacted their relatives and even talked to 2 soldiers who confirmed that they served in the 234th regiment and were in Bucha.

Bucha came under occupation in the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion. The liberation of the city was announced on April 1. More than 450 bodies of dead were found in de-occupied Bucha and Bucha community. Most of them were killed. Numerous facts of torture and abuse of civilians were also recorded, in particular, a torture chamber was found in the basement of a children's sanatorium.