JAKARTA - Amnesty International said on Friday there was strong evidence that Russian troops had committed war crimes, including extrajudicial executions of civilians, when they occupied an area outside the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv in February and March.
Civilians also suffered abuses such as "reckless shooting and torture" at the hands of Russian troops, during their failed assault on Kyiv in the early stages of the invasion launched by the Kremlin on February 24, the rights group said in a report.
"This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern in which Russian forces take control of a town or village," Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser, told a news conference in Kyiv.
The information gathered by the group "could be used, hopefully, to hold perpetrators accountable, if not today, someday," he said.
Russia, which has called its invasion a 'special military operation' to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists, denies any wrongdoing by its forces.
On the other hand, Kyiv and its Western supporters say the claims of fascism are a false pretext for a war of unwarranted aggression.
Ukrainian authorities say they are investigating more than 9,000 potential war crimes by Russian forces. The International Criminal Court is also investigating alleged war crimes.
Amnesty's report is the latest to document alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops as they occupied areas northwest of Kyiv, including the city of Bucha, where Ukrainian authorities say more than 400 civilians were killed. Moscow withdrew its troops in early April.
The report concluded that Russian troops had committed a number of actual war crimes in Bucha, including "many extrajudicial killings", most of them near the intersection of Yablunska and Vodoprovidna roads.
Meanwhile, a Reuters investigation published on Thursday documented clues, including testimony and evidence focused on Yablunska Street, to the identities of individual Russian soldiers and military units present in Bucha.
Those units include the 76th Guards Air Assault Division, which Amnesty reports are also in the city.
Rovera said he collected in Bucha armor-piercing bullets and cartridge casings produced at a factory in Tula, south of Moscow, for rifles used only by elite units of the Russian air force whose presence in Bucha has been confirmed.
"We also found and were able to see some military documents showing the presence of this special unit in the places where these crimes were committed," he explained.
Amnesty also said in its report that the Russian airstrikes that hit eight residential buildings on March 1-2 in the town of Borodyanka, killing at least 40 civilians, were "disproportionate and indiscriminate, and clearly a war crime".
"Russian forces cannot credibly claim, they are not aware that civilians live in the buildings that were targeted," he said.
Amnesty said it had documented 22 cases of extrajudicial killings by Russian forces, "most of them extrajudicial executions" in Bucha and the surrounding area.
Asked by Reuters before Amnesty's report on the Russian operation in Bucha, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Bucha's story is set-up and false".
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