The Tragedy Of Murder In Bucha, Ukraine, Witness Calls Chechen Soldiers And Shots In The Head

Conditions in Bucha, Ukraine after being abandoned by Russian troops. (Wikimedia Commons/President.gov.ua)

JAKARTA - A rope tied to his leg and a charred hole in his forehead, a dead man lies in the bushes near a train track in the suburb of Bucha, Ukraine.

A haunting figure, flesh pale yellow like a wax statue, lies surrounded by fallen brown leaves. Just a few meters (meters) away, another victim's body lay in the bushes.

"Don't touch the body. There may be mines," said a policeman, who indicated the place where the body lay but asked not to be named.

Bucha, 37 km (23 miles) northwest of Kyiv, was occupied by Russian forces for more than a month after the February 24 invasion of Ukraine. When Russian troops withdrew last week, they left dead civilians in the streets of Bucha, inside buildings and buried in shallow graves.

Local officials say more than 300 people were killed by Russian forces in Bucha alone. Of these, about 50 of them were executed.

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

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

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

Witnesses in the city have given details of what they say are several other extra-judicial killings at the hands of Russians. Reuters was unable to independently verify them.

The Ukrainian government accuses Russia of genocide and war crimes. The Kremlin dismissed the accusations as propaganda and said its forces were not targeting civilians.

Russia's Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Tuesday that the allegations of abuse were false. He said while Bucha was under Russian control "not a single civilian has suffered as a result of any violence."

President Volodymyr Zelensky during a review of conditions in Bucha. (Wikimedia Commons/President.gov.ua)

On Sunday the Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying all photos and videos published by Ukrainian authorities alleging crimes by Russian troops in Bucha were "provocations."

In another incident nearby, construction worker Eduard Karpenko recounted how he saw one of his neighbors lined up to be shot by a Russian soldier.

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

Karpenko said the man was led from near his home by a soldier who two Russian soldiers said was from Chechnya, a region in southern Russia that has deployed troops to Ukraine in support of Russia.

The soldier herded the man out of sight, to the end of the wooden fence flanking the logs, and then four shots were heard, Karpenko said.

"They took him to the end of the gate and shot him, with the last shot in the head," Karpenko said, raising his hand as if he was being led away.

Two men beside Karpenko, who declined to be named, confirmed that they also saw Yeremich being taken away and heard gunshots.

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

"We covered him with a blanket, then with another, and dragged him to the grave. There was a lot of blood," Karpenko said.

He said the body was buried nearby in a park, a place marked by a long wooden post and metal frame shaped like a coffin, seen by Reuters.

Karpenko and two other men hung baseball caps from a branch at the location where they said the shooting took place.

Earlier, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, an ally of President Putin, said in a statement on February 26 that Chechen forces would fight in Ukraine as part of Russia's "special military operation" to demilitarize. Reuters was unable to determine whether they were operating in Bucha.