Caught on Camera, Traced by Phone: The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha. By Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Dmitriy Khavin, Christoph Koettl, Haley Willis, Alexander Cardia, Natalie Reneau and Malachy Browne•December 22, 2022. Exclusive phone records, documents, interviews and thousands of hours of video reveal how a Russian paratrooper unit killed dozens of people on one street in March. !!!
Published Dec. 22, 2022Updated Dec. 23, 2022
By Yousur Al-HlouMasha FroliakDmitriy KhavinChristoph KoettlHaley WillisAlexander CardiaNatalie Reneau and Malachy Browne
When videos and photos emerged in April showing bodies of dozens of civilians strewn along a street in Bucha, Ukrainians and the rest of the world voiced horror and outrage. But in Russia, officials had a completely different reaction: denial.
President Vladimir V. Putin dismissed the gruesome scene as “a provocation,” and claimed that the Russian Army had nothing to do with it.
But an eight-month visual investigation by The New York Times concluded that the perpetrators of the massacre along Yablunska Street were Russian paratroopers from the 234th Air Assault Regiment led by Lt. Col. Artyom Gorodilov.
The evidence shows that the killings were part of a deliberate and systematic effort to ruthlessly secure a route to the capital, Kyiv. Soldiers interrogated and executed unarmed men of fighting age, and killed people who unwittingly crossed their paths — whether it was children fleeing with their families, locals hoping to find groceries or people simply trying to get back home on their bicycles.
We identified 36 of the Ukrainian victims killed along Yablunska Street. Read more about their final moments.
Times reporters spent months in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew, interviewing residents, collecting vast troves of security camera footage and obtaining exclusive records from government sources. In New York, Times investigators analyzed the materials and reconstructed the killings along this one street down to the minute. Some of the most damning evidence implicating the 234th included phone records and decoded call signs used by commanders on Russian radio channels.
Wach the hi Resolution video at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrGZ66uKcl0
It all points to a brazen and bloody campaign that turned a quiet suburban street into what residents now call the “road of death.”
Historically, journalists and investigators relied on a single photograph or video to expose wartime atrocities. In 1992, Time magazine published a photo of an emaciated prisoner in Bosnia on its cover. Almost 20 years later, a video captured the execution of captured Tamil Tiger fighters in the final days of Sri Lanka’s civil war.
What differentiates the evidence discovered in Bucha are the scale and detail that link a single unit and its commander to specific killings, with possible implications for ongoing investigations. The International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) is already investigating possible war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine.
“This kind of digital evidence is a sea change, especially compared to past investigations such as in the former Yugoslavia,” said Matthew Gillett, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex who previously worked at international criminal courts. “If any Ukraine cases end up at an international court such as the I.C.C., it has to have a significant video component.”
Read more at : https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/video/russia-ukraine-bucha-massacre-takeaways.html
The Associated Press, @frontlinepbs and SITU Research reviewed hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, intercepts of Russian phone calls and built a 3D model to show what happened in Bucha and identify who was responsible. bit.ly/3NvKZ6y
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