RFE/RL Witnesses and Question About the Bucha Massacre

July 2, 2022

(rough, incomplete - last update July 12)

Geolocating Where "Roman" Was Killed 

HRW: "On March 5, on the northeast end of Yablunska Street, a man who wished to remain anonymous and his son-in-law, Roman, were hiding in their basement with their family due to the intense shelling and gunfire in the area. At about 4:30 p.m., the man said, when things were quieter, they opened their front gate to assess the damage. As Roman stepped out of the yard, his father-in-law heard a muffled sound and Roman fell to the ground. “I approached him and asked him if he was okay, and he just started moaning,” the man said. “I saw his coat from the left side was torn open.”

"He and another family member immediately dragged Roman into the house. Roman’s sister-in-law, Tetiana, said they tried unsuccessfully to call a hospital and the Ukrainian territorial defense forces for help. Roman suffered all night and died the following morning at about 8 a.m.."

NYT Month of Terror: Referring to March 5th: "That afternoon, a father and his son stepped out of their gate to go for a walk along their street, Yablunska, or Apple Tree Street. “They shot my son,” his father, Ivan, said. “I was next to him. It would be better if it had been me.” ... “He was suffering the whole night and died at 8.20 am,” Ivan said of his son. The family buried him in the front garden under a huge mound of earth. “It’s very hard to bury your child,” Ivan said. “I would not wish that on my worst enemy.”"

RFE/RL or Radio Svoboda video report, narrated by reporter Levko Stek: a local who didn't want to talk on camera but had a relative killed, he thinks by a sniper. Man: On March 5, a sniper appeared. A sniper killed my son-in-law on the street before the curfew 

near that brown gate (pointing to his left)

"[the sniper] kept killing everyone who showed up on that street." 

Stek: Everyone on the street? 

"I don't know for sure. Shots were fired. I didn't go out there."

 ''They Killed People Systematically': Bucha Residents Allege War Crimes By Expelled Russian Forces - YouTube  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaCD0XlxYgA

Son vs. son-in-law: assuming son-in-law with added affection. 

The Times said Ivan had "asked that only his first name be published. Many residents in Bucha were frightened after weeks under Russian occupation and asked that their surnames not be published for fear of retribution at a later stage." 

But then the accompanying map places this killing - and where Ivan could be found, whatever his face. This correlates to just east of the new roundabout across from the new track housing with great windows, where 4 executed men were later seen, one with his hands tied. They note the mound of earth. If that's accurate, how many Ivans with a dead son/son-in-law named Roman and a grave in the yard can there there be at that dot on the map? I don't mean to give any tips to would-be retributors, but they wouldn't need any help, if they existed. The New York Times showed them right where to go. 

The RFE/RL video shows the man on camera, just not his face. He wears an old blue jacket with white stripes on the cuffs, and stands by a basic brown fence and gate with piled earth and then gravel to his left - not much to identify it by. But then the camera shows a view back from the west, looking over the more recent bodies - the pedestrian sign's top right corner looks down the line of small trees in front of his place. - He says he didn't go out there much, but as soon as you maybe don't see him, there's "Ivan," out there gathering intel, as it were. 

Furthermore, all the other shots in the video's first half are in the same area, including where Stek explains how his witness didn't want to be on camera - that's filmed from the same spot (revisited 2 days later). The stacks of paving stones behind him on the left are immediately across from the place, and those are the same small trees on his right, same brown fence behind them, and a roof of what must be Ivan's house.

Yandex Maps and Google Maps street view compared with an Azov Battalion drone view of March 30 and footage of "Ivan" at the site allow a clear placement to 354 Yablunska. That's pretty exactly where the New York Times mapped it happening.

In the view above, and even better below (March 23 drone view) there's a front garden partly visible, maybe with Roman buried in it. (below in white, and/or the space to the left, including under the trees) But another mound of earth the right size for that is seen clearly ... outside the fence. But if that's where he was buried, why and by whom? Weren't they afraid of the sniper? ( “It’s very hard to bury your child,” Ivan said.)

That would be very odd. Maybe this is some other dirt mound and we just can't see the grave in the yard. Add 7/12: Yeah. The house down the way has 2 such mounds of dirt. Ivan's at least has a pile of gravel next to it. There are paving stones stacked in 2 other spots along the street. Clearly, an area-wide paving project was underway. Drone view March 12 or 13 via CNN shows better the mounds - and might show the grave, less obvious but next to the driveway. Oddly, by this time, two other bodies have been killed in about the spot Roman was (dark blob in the street). These two, seemingly male, perhaps a father and son, were seen in the same spot unburied in early April, the furthest bodies to the east. A presumably Russian tank is seen plying the street, just off frame here to the west. But none of them ever came to remove and hide this evidence.

Moving on ... 

Other open question: did they step out just for a smoke or a walk past the gate, or maybe to film the Russian positions to help get them killed, or perhaps even to shoot at the Russians themselves? In the line to be shot is in the same line to shoot. Either way, the Russians might have asked the same question and then opted to end the question rather than finding the answer. Other possibilities, less and more sinister, also exist.

Oleksandr

Another man the same reporter was steered to also left off his family name, giving only Oleksandr.  He speaks of 3 killings of a certain batch of 10 people hiding in a certain building around 203 Yablunska on an unclear date ("the first day," where the Russians first came on Feb. 27, but maybe meaning March 3, when some witnesses have Russian forces first taking up residence here?),

Oleksandr - same video, second half

"[The Russian troops] came here on February 27. People were hiding in that building. There were six men and four women. They killed three men out of six." He points to the west-southwest at the corner of building 203A, the one closest to Yablunska street. This makes most sense as a single event on the 27th, which we've never heard about and could hardly fit with the day's events - but when he's asked how they were killed, Oleksandr goes into a breakdown by days. 

2/27 or 3/3: "On the first day, they shot Yevhen on the street for no obvious reason. No one knows why." No victim of that name known to me, and no deaths here known on either day.  

2/28 or 3/4" The next day, they shot Leonid. That morning, he showed them his documents and said that he lived here. He was shot in the back when he turned around." (gestures towards graves). A man who lived nearby  - Valerii Kizilov, 70, ouse geolocated to 64 Vodoprovidna (exp. elsewhere) was reported shot by soldiers sometime on the 4th. On either day, that too seems a new story.  

2/28 or 3/4, or a later day: "They killed the third man when they were drunk. They told him to hand over their mobile phones. He brought the phones, and they shot him and then threw a grenade at him. He was buried in pieces without his head. It was horrible." (points to graves) That's a strange story we've never heard. The guy blown up AND shot, admittedly for no logical reason ("drunk") - after collaborating with the Russians by delivering the phones of locals ... likely just blown up by a mortar shell or the like, maybe from the Kiev side, and thus re-branded. Maybe an Azov Battalion drone was used. Maybe it was the mindless and corrupted "orcs." WEither way - what remarkably poor luck had this building at the edge of no-man's land and Kiev's defense by artillery. 

Then off that list, to others killed in the area, and maybe keeping to an early March chronology Oleksandr continues: "My brother was killed on March 5 at around 5 o'clock when he was walking to a cellar. He was buried over there." He mentions this matter-of-factly, almost in passing. Similar to how "Ivan" tends to discuss his son-in-law "Roman."

Is this Roman's brother? How many men were killed around 5pm on the 5th while walking or vaguely stepping out and were then buried, rather than left out to rot like many? We've seen some buried here, but still, this initially grabbed my attention, inspiring me to double-check a previous geolocation of this scene. But having placed it all, he points roughly the opposite direction to Roman's grave, and he knows his directions. he points roughly east (or northeast by Bucha's local orientation), an unclear distance, perhaps to where Roman had since been re-buried, or perhaps to where some else we haven't heard about was buried whenever.

Continuing with this witness anyway: The reporter Stek says "It looks like those were not the only cases," showing some 4 other graves in the area - maybe including that brother. 

Oleksandr: They killed people systematically. A sniper boasted that he'd killed two people through windows. He just shot them when he spotted them in that nine-story building." That's not much of a system, but the sniper personally boasted of it, and Oleksandr learned about it. Maybe just drunk soldiers talking loudly in peoples' yards, etc. Anyway "It wasn't an accident or a military necessity. It was an execution of civilians. They were just killing us. Over there, there are people shot with their hands tied behind their backs. It's murder." 

- looking east and up, he means Vodoprovidna 62 - the only 9-story around, hence "the") Another local in the same video, Viktor, means the same when he says: "Another [body] was in the nine-story building. I saw a hole in the forehead. It happened a week ago, more or less."

The same man speaks again with even more knowledge and authority, in a June 9 RFE/RL video, as Oleksandr Konovalov. Close-captioning not available, and I can't understand Ukrainian, so for now the decription and the viuduals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UcSEgTPvC4

Counted 11 corpses under the house: unique testimony and footage from a resident of Buchi

"The Red Guardsman who took hospital workers and patients hostage in the city of Bucha is facing 12 years behind bars. On his order, fellow officers fired large-caliber machine guns at the building of the medical institution, and the suspect himself forced one of the people there." (?? I don't know this story at all)

"And although there have been no Russian troops in Buch for several months, the locals continue to talk about the horror of what they experienced during the occupation."

"In particular, Radio Liberty correspondent Taras Levchenko spoke with a 50-year-old resident of Buchi, under whose house 11 people were killed. The man's own brother also died from the bullets of the occupiers. And he himself found weapons, documents and other evidence of the presence of the Russian military on the territory of Ukraine. In addition, he filmed the movement of their columns, and also, after the fiercest battles, Russian equipment and the bodies of dead Russian soldiers, even up close."

Standing atop maybe every abandoned tank on Vokzalna street is something I don't think I've seen anyone else do. Composites of his couple of unique videos:

Konovalov his phone out, pointing directions, running through names and details like a police detective working the case. He shows photos, documents, Russian patches, passports, credit cards he and maybe some friends have found and just collected, from those killed on the 27th, or whenever. Maybe he's at a police station there? It looks like someone's home. 

...

He knows it all by now, finally discovering the 11 further bodies beneath "his house" at 203B? He shows dismal lodgings in a basement, apparently being the one entered by this staircase on the corner of that building.

Further Discoveries? 

 I have never heard of any 11 bodies in one location, here or anywhere in Bucha. This raises some questions like why was it never reported before? Or if it was, how did I miss that? 

I'll try and get some translation to help shed some light, any perhaps do some further research no this, and might report back below. 

...