BUCHA, Ukraine, April 7 – (Note: some images in this story may offend or disturb)
Located in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood of the Ukrainian city of Bucha, an apartment complex on Vodoprovidna Street has neatly trimmed verges with pedestrian walkways. Number 34a Vodoprovidna belongs to a cluster of modern residential buildings adjacent to a kindergarten.
Residents are mostly middle class: Vasyl Nedashkivskiy, who installed PVC windows, lived on the fifth floor with his wife Tetyana and their dog Nika. Another resident is a child psychologist and a third, Oleksii Tarasevich, is a nanotechnology engineer. According to Tarasevich, who kept a diary and video and photo recording of what he saw from his apartment window, Russian soldiers arrived at the address shortly after noon on March 5. He shared the images and footage with Reuters, who confirmed they were taken during the relevant period.
A month later, 47-year-old Nedashkivskiy and another local were dead – their mutilated bodies were discovered in the stairwell in the basement of one of the complex’s buildings – and many of the complex’s residents had fled. A Renault Captur SUV and an Audi sedan were overturned in a residents’ parking lot.
Accounts from at least a dozen residents of the complex paint a picture of violence and intimidation by the soldiers while in the neighborhood. According to his wife and Tarasevich, Nedashkivskiy had been severely beaten while unarmed.
Nedashkivskiy’s wife Tetyana told Reuters that after his beating in mid-March, Russian soldiers found an automatic rifle hidden in their apartment. She said a soldier told her that Russian troops then took her husband to an undisclosed location for questioning. Two weeks later, after Russian troops left, neighbors found Nedashkivskiy’s body, Tetyana said.
A photo of Nedashkivskiy’s body, verified by Reuters, showed his face and hands had been crushed with what appeared to be a blunt instrument.
The second man was found dead on April 1, according to Tetyana, in the same spot where Nedashkivskiy’s body was discovered. Traces on the second man’s body, which Reuters discovered two days later, indicated he had been beaten and shot through the mouth at point-blank range. Continue reading
Witness accounts and videos collected by Reuters also show that Russian soldiers were worried that although there had been no visible Ukrainian military presence in Bucha since early March, they could still be targeted by drones or by combatants hidden among residents. The video shows soldiers in full combat gear with weapons cocked, and Tarasevich said they took blankets from the apartments to camouflage their vehicles and appeared scared and nervous.
The reports also reveal acts of defiance by residents who resented the invaders’ occupation of their town and apartment complex.
The Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to detailed requests for comment on the deaths of the two men, on events at the apartment complex described by local residents, and on Ukrainian claims about Russian killings of civilians in Bucha.
Russia has denied deliberately targeting civilians following its February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has launched a so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine aimed at demilitarizing and “denazifying” Ukraine. Ukraine and the West say the invasion was illegal and unjustified.
Since Russian troops withdrew from Bucha last week, Ukrainian officials said hundreds of civilians have been found dead. Bucha’s mayor said dozens were victims of extrajudicial killings by Russian forces. Reuters could not independently verify these figures.
Reuters has seen the remains of five victims shot through the head in Bucha. One had his hands tied behind his back. Another tied his feet. Reuters was unable to independently determine who was responsible. Continue reading
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a news conference on Wednesday that images allegedly showing dead civilians in Bucha were faked and released to justify further Western sanctions against Moscow and “to make (peace) more difficult if not completely disturbing. Conversations.”
RUSSIAN TAKE OVER
Bucha is located about 30 kilometers northwest of the center of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. Tarasevich said before Russian soldiers reached the city, he and Vasyl Nedashkivskiy helped members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, made up of civilian volunteers, build barricades near the Kiev satellite city of Irpin.
Tarasevich said he was not a member of the Territorial Defense Forces. Neither was Nedashkivskiy, according to his wife. Territorial defense officials in Bucha referred questions to the deputy mayor, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Local Defense Forces numbers also went unanswered.
Russian soldiers reached Bucha on February 27, locals said, a week before they arrived at the complex on Vodoprovidna Street. There they seized three apartments in one of the buildings, which they used as a command post, and also used a basement, Tarasevich said. Troops parked armored personnel carriers and military trucks in the yard of the housing complex, pictures taken by Tarasevich showed.
About 3,700 civilians remained in Bucha after the Russians arrived, the city’s mayor said, or about a tenth of the city’s population.
The troops ordered residents to wear white ribbons around their arms to identify them as civilians, eight residents told Reuters. According to Tarasevich and Tetyana, the soldiers imposed a curfew every night.
Soldiers searched apartments and left handwritten signs on the door that read in Russian: “Inspected,” Tarasevich said. When they came across empty apartments, they sometimes took household items with them, he added. A photo he shared with Reuters showed an armored truck parked outside with what appeared to be civilian gym bags tied to the roof.
The soldiers also ordered locals to hand over their mobile phones, at least 20 Bucha residents told Reuters.
Tarasevich said he gave the soldiers an old, broken phone. His actual phone was hidden under his elderly mother, with whom he lives. He said he told the soldiers she was too weak to get up so they didn’t search her bed.
Tarasevich said he hid in his apartment ammunition he pulled from a damaged Russian military vehicle on February 27 after it was attacked by Ukrainian troops. He said he planned to hand them over to Ukrainian forces but didn’t make it before the Russians reached the complex.
A BODY ON THE STAIRS
On the evening of March 17, Vasyl Nedashkivskiy arrived at the entrance to his building a few minutes after the 5 p.m. curfew, according to his wife and Tarasevich, whose apartment is on the same landing as the couple’s. They said Nedashkivskiy was not wearing the white armband required by Russian soldiers.
Both told Reuters they heard loud voices coming from downstairs. A soldier came to Tarasevich’s apartment and, pointing his gun at him, ordered him to go downstairs, Tarasevich said.
Tarasevich said he saw Nedashkivskiy lying motionless on the ground in a pool of blood, with at least three soldiers standing over him. Nedashkivskiy’s face was bloody and several teeth lay on the floor. A soldier ordered Tarasevich to raise Nedashkivskiy.
When he protested, the soldier pointed his gun at him and verbally threatened him, according to Tarasevich, who detailed his account in a signed statement verified by Reuters and given to local prosecutors. Neither the Kyiv prosecutor’s office nor the local branch immediately responded to requests for comment.
Tarasevich said he helped Nedashkivskiy onto a bench at the entrance to the building. The soldiers then sent Tarasevich back to his apartment.
About two hours later, according to Tarasevich, he heard a noise on the landing and through binoculars in his door saw Nedashkivskiy walking into the couple’s apartment with some soldiers.
According to Nedashkivskiy’s wife, the soldiers then found the automatic weapon hidden under a television. She said her husband received it when, before the arrival of the Russian troops, acquaintances who served in the Ukrainian territorial defense left for safekeeping.
The soldiers took the couple to the command post in Building 33b, Tetyana said. There, a soldier hit her husband with the butt of his gun, she added.
Tetyana said she was taken to a room, a children’s room, where she fell asleep. When she woke up, her husband was gone.
A soldier told her he was taken to the unit’s headquarters for questioning, without giving the location, Tetyana said. Reuters observed dried drops of blood on the floor and walls leading out of the command post, which it said had been taken, and down the stairs during a visit to the building on Thursday.
After four days at the command post, Tetyana said the soldiers allowed her to return home. Her husband’s body was found about a week later, on April 1, on the stairs leading to the basement of the building that housed the command center.
She said her husband refused to bend to the will of the Russian soldiers. “Vasya didn’t put on the white bracelet,” she said, using an affectionate version of his first name. “He said: ‘I am on Ukrainian soil. I am Ukrainian’.”
Edited by Christian Lowe and Cassell Bryan-Low