Massacre in Bucha 2022
Unarmed civilians
Shortly after the invasion, in early March 2022, disturbing reports emerged from the Ukrainian town of Butcha, 25 km northwest of Kyiv. Russian soldiers had killed civilians. The Kyiv Independent newspaper reported that on March 4, Russian troops killed three unarmed Ukrainian civilians who were returning from delivering food to a dog shelter. On March 5, at around 7:15 in the morning, two cars carrying two families trying to escape the war were machine-gunned. Two children, their mother and a man were shot dead. On March 7, the mayor of the town, Anatoly Petrovich Fedoruk, said that the situation in Butcha was a nightmare, and that «we can't even remove the bodies because the shelling with heavy weapons continues day and night. Dogs are tearing the bodies apart in the streets of the city».
Anatoly Petrovich Fedoruk
Shortly after the invasion, in early March 2022, disturbing reports emerged from the Ukrainian town of Butcha, 25 km northwest of Kyiv. Russian soldiers had killed civilians. The Kyiv Independent newspaper reported that on March 4, Russian troops killed three unarmed Ukrainian civilians who were returning from delivering food to a dog shelter. On March 5, at around 7:15 in the morning, two cars carrying two families trying to escape the war were machine-gunned. Two children, their mother and a man were shot dead. On March 7, the mayor of the town, Anatoly Petrovch Fedoruk, said that the situation in Butcha was a nightmare, and that «we can't even remove the bodies because the shelling with heavy weapons continues day and night. Dogs are tearing the bodies apart in the streets of the city».
The bodies of 12 men were simply left on the road. They had been shot in the back of the head. Women had been raped and their bodies burned, many of the bodies were found with their hands tied behind their backs. On May 19, 2022, The New York Times released videos from March 4, 2022, showing Russian soldiers leading nine men away and then forcing them to the ground. A drone filmed eight dead bodies at the scene where the video was shot, and the bodies were found there after the liberation of Butcha. One of the men had survived by pretending to be dead.
The shot man with the bicycle
On August 8, 2022, officials published a count of 458 dead, including 50 children.
Russian fabrications
The Russian govrnment denied any involvement and claimed that the killings of civilians had taken place after the Russian troops had already left on March 30. It accused Ukraine and the Western countries of staging the massacre. According to a statement by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Sergeevich Peskov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov, the bodies seen in the footage were said to have been placed there by the Ukrainian army after March 30, 2022. According to Lavrov, that was also the reason why the bodies were not yet decomposed. The Russian media called it fake news.
Independent investigations
Images from satellite operator Maxar Technologies published by The New York Times showed that the story about the bodies being placed after March 31 was a fabrication, because at least 11 of the bodies found were already there on March 11, when the Russians were still occupying the city. The photos, taken between March 9 and 11, showed the bodies lying on the ground in the same place and in the same position as in the photos taken by Agence France-Presse on April 2. Because of the cold, they were not yet decomposed.
The satellite images also showed the first signs of a mass grave being dug in Butcha on March 10. By March 31, the pit had been expanded to a 14-meter-long «trench» in the southwestern part of the area near the church.
Massagraf in Boetsja
In their book Un endroit inconvénient, writer and filmmaker Jonathan Littell and photographer and filmmaker Antoine d’Agata reconstructed street by street, house by house, what had happened and how citizens were systematically subjected to the horrors.
Criticism is severely punished
On June 17, 2024, a Moscow court issued arrest warrants for editor-in-chief Roman Alexandrovich Anin (°1986), founder of the investigative journalism website Важные истории [[Vazhniye istoriii] or Important Stories, and for journalist Yekaterina Georgievna Fomina (°1992), a contributor to TV Dozhd and Important Stories, and winner of several international journalism awards. Anin and Fomina were accused of «spreading false information» about the Russian armed forces in Ukraine. In August 2022, Fomina published an investigative report and a video in Important Stories about war crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the massacre of civilians in Butcha and the more northerly village of Andriivka, under the title The Commander Gave the Order: «They Must Be Destroyed».
Jekaterina Georgievna Fomina
Based on this video, both Anin and Fomina were sentenced on March 31, 2025, to 8.5 years in prison and banned from blogging for 3 years. Since the journalists work in Latvia, the sentence was pronounced in absentia and will be calculated «from the moment of their arrest or deportation to the Russian Federation».
Click on the arrow below to watch the documentary with English subtitles.
As part of her investigation, Yekaterina Fomina also interviewed Russian Corporal Daniil Andreevich Frolkin, a mechanic-machinist of the 64th Motorised Rifle Brigade of the 51460th Military Unit, who participated in the Andriivka events. Frolkin was sentenced to 5.5 years of probation by the Chabarovsk Garrison Military Court on charges of «disseminating false information about the Russian Armed Forces».