BBC correspondent Sarah Rainsford investigates the killing of civilians at a summer camp in Bucha, Ukraine.
Since the expulsion of Russian forces from the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in late March, the bodies of more than 1,000 civilians have been discovered in the Bucha area – many of them hastily buried in shallow graves.
The BBC learned that around 650 people were shot in what a senior police official described as “executions”. Reporter Sarah Rainsford investigates what happened at a children’s summer camp – now viewed as a crime scene.*This article contains quotes that some readers may find shocking*
It is not easy to find the place of death immediately in the dark. However, in a cold, damp basement at the edge of the forest that made Bucha a casual pre-war escape, five Ukrainians fell to their knees and were shot in the head.
To the right of the entrance are stones covered with blood. Among them was a blue wool hat with a hole in one side and a brim stained with blood. I counted at least a dozen bullet holes in the wall.
A few steps away are the remains of a pack of Russian military supplies: an open box of meat and rice porridge and an empty packet of crackers.
A name painted in graffiti on a wall reminds us that the site is a children’s camp. But when Russian troops moved to Bucha on the outskirts of the capital in early March, Camp Radiant turned into an execution camp.
Not only is the story of the murders at the summer camp frightening, but the following detail as well: More than 1,000 civilians were killed in a month in the Russian-occupied Bucha region, but most not by shrapnel or shelling.
More than 650 were shot dead by Russian soldiers.
Now he hunts Ukrainian killers.
Volodymyr Boichenko lived in Hostomel, near Bucha, and near the airport where the first Russian forces landed to try to overthrow the Ukrainian government.
When his sister, Aliona Mykytiuk, decided to flee before the conflict caught her, she begged Volodymyr to go with her. He was a civilian, not a soldier, but he wanted to stay and help his country.
So he spent his days searching for Hostomel in search of food and water to take to his neighbors, including children trapped in their basements by constant Russian bombings and air raids.
Volodymyr, 34-year-old enterprising, talkative who traveled the world in the merchant navy, called his family from Hostomel most days to make sure he was safe.
Aliona anxiously awaited short phone calls: she knew she had to go to a higher altitude to make contact, and that if the bombing was heavy, it would be impossible to get out of the air raid shelter.
When he ran out of supplies, he asked his brother to try to escape, but the roads were closed.
Aliona last heard from him on March 8. Volodymyr was not the extrovert type, but that day he told his sister not to worry about him.
“She said ‘I really love you,’ and it was so painful to hear,” said Aliona, rubbing her eyes hard but unable to hold back her tears. “There was fear in his voice.”
Four days later, Volodymyr was spotted by neighbors near Promenystyi, or Camp Radiant, as it is known here. Then he disappeared.
In March, clashes intensified around Kyiv, with the epicenter of the small town of Bucha. The withdrawal of Russian troops in early April revealed scenes that shocked the world: the bodies of residents lying in the streets where they were shot.
Moscow says loudly and clearly that the murders were staged; This is an idea that is as plainly wrong as it is distorted.
Determined to hold the perpetrators accountable, Ukrainian investigators are now busy collecting concrete evidence in the area under their control.
“We don’t know what Putin’s plans are, so we are working as quickly as possible in case he drops a bomb and destroys all evidence,” said Andrii Niebytov, chief of the Kyiv regional police.
This evidence includes an area now filled with civilian cars with several bullet holes piled up on the outskirts of Bucha.
These are the vehicles that were targeted as families tried to escape. One still has a piece of white cloth hanging from the window to show the soldiers that what’s inside is not a threat. If you get too close, you’ll smell the nasty smell of death.
Volodymyr Boichenko was among them when the bodies were found at Camp Radiant on April 4. Aliona spent weeks frantically searching hospitals and morgues. That day they sent him a photograph for identification. She knew it was her brother before she downloaded the image to her mobile phone.
“I hate them with every cell of my being,” Aliona cries out about Volodymyr’s assassins. “I know it’s wrong to say this about humans, but they’re not human. There wasn’t a single part of those guys’ bodies that hadn’t been shot.”
The five men were found crouching on their knees with their heads bowed and their hands tied behind their backs.
“We know they were tortured,” the police chief told the BBC. “The Russian army crossed the line in how the war was waged. They were not fighting the army in Ukraine, they were kidnapping and torturing civilians.”
Neither the Prosecutor’s Office nor the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) will disclose details of the ongoing investigations, but some Russian military personnel have been so careless in covering their tracks that there are likely to be important clues for investigation.
Ukrainian territorial defense units even discovered lists of soldiers in some abandoned positions. One appears to depict part of the garbage collection shift, while the other includes details of passports and cell phone numbers.
With such a huge workload (more than 11,000 possible war crimes cases recorded so far), Ukraine’s security services have turned to the most digitally savvy civilians for help.
“I feel a call to duty,” says Dmytro Replianchuk, a journalist for the news site slidstvo.info who worked to expose corruption in Ukrainian police forces before the war.
Now he’s joined forces with prosecutors to search the Internet for additional data to help catch war crimes suspects.
“I understand that this will be very difficult and many cases will not be resolved. However, it is important to seek as much information as possible during these weeks,” explains Dmytro.
Among the Radiant Camp rubbish we found a potential clue: a packaged package sent by a woman named Ksyukha to a Russian soldier whose name and military unit were clearly marked.
Unit 6720 is headquartered in Rubtsovsk, in the Altai region of Siberia. He had previously been linked to Bucha when soldiers in the city were caught on security cameras sending oversized packages full of looted goods from Ukrainian homes to relatives.
We still cannot be sure whether the Rubtsovsk soldiers were based in the children’s camp or killed the men there. Police need to establish a more precise time of death first.
“We’re working on it, but it’s not a quick thing,” explains Niebytov. “That camp was a headquarters, so there would be a commander. The soldiers couldn’t execute anyone without the commander’s knowledge. So let’s find the organizers first, then we’ll find the executioners.”
Opposite Camp Radiant, behind a shrapnel-strewn church, a corner of Bucha is slowly showing new signs of life.
As the youths rush through the courtyard, a man puts wooden sheets on the windows that were broken as the city was constantly bombed. And a small shop has now reopened to serve other people who have returned to start their own repairs.
As they pass each other, neighbors talk about the days when Russian tanks invaded their town, soldiers fired wildly, and drunks roamed the streets, breaking into homes, and robbed.
And they remember the local who took shelter in their apartment. Calm had escaped from the summer camp across the street. Its inhabitants protected it despite the risk.
Viktor Sytnytskyi had never heard of Radiant, but it matches every detail it gives. Sytnytskyi is currently in western Ukraine and told me his story on the phone, calling me from his car so as not to disturb his mother.
In early March, Russian soldiers caught Viktor on the street. They tied their hands and sold them, then dragged them to a basement, which he was sure was at the children’s camp site.
There the Russians splashed water on his legs to freeze them and put a gun to his head.
“Where are the fascists? Where are the troops? Where is Zelensky?” they kept saying. One of them mentioned Putin, and I said something rude and he hit me,” Viktor recalls.
She remembers being angry and horrified at her captors. Sytnytskyi had worked with men from Siberia in Moscow in the past, and was horrified that the Russians were now treating him so brutally. Even more so when one of the soldiers reveals that he is also from Siberia.
Viktor told her he was sorry that things had gotten to this point.
“The sad thing is that our grandparents fought together against the Nazis, and now you are fascists,” said the Russian soldier.
“He said to me, ‘You have until morning to remember what you saw or they will shoot you.
Victor was lucky that night. Heavy bombings took place, and when he realized that he was no longer being watched by his captors, he fled for his life.
“I thought my chances of surviving under the bombing were better than staying in that basement. They had the gun already pointed at my head. What would it take for them to pull the trigger?”
burial
Volodymyr Boichenko attended an honorable burial under cherry blossoms at the old Bucha cemetery, after being found in a mass grave in the children’s camp.
After her funeral, Aliona says she finally saw her brother’s face in her dream, as if to console her.
But he still has many questions. The cross on Volodymyr’s tomb is marked only with his birthday, not the date of his death, because the family has no idea when he was killed.
That answer may never come until the Russian commander who took over the Radiant Camp is found.
But like everyone else in Bucha, they know that civilians are not just stranded in this war. They are attacked by Russian soldiers who do not know or care about the rules of war.
In collaboration with: Daria Sipigina, Mariana Matveich and Tony Brown
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source: Noticias
