Death in Bucha's Gray Zone, part 10: Clashes at the Continent Center
August 11, 2022 (still rough and incomplete, but huge)
last edits August 14
The Continent combined residential-commercial center is a new addition to Bucha, begun only in 2018 and still not complete when Russia invaded. It's one of the places they occupied, with military vehicles seen ... I wrote about this earlier in part 1, using vague, distance images underrating the damage to suggest Ukrainian forces spared it just because it was nice. And no towers will need torn down, but what's more interesting is the serious damage it DID suffer and what that says.
A Continent Mall starter page on Facebook shared designs with a darker color scheme into mid-2018, with no photos of it for real. Current Google Maps satellite view shows 6 buildings mostly done, just the foundation of another building south of those, and one of 2 town houses on the west done. By 2022 both town houses were done, and the tower at the south end of the complex was nearly finished. (some background images here) Correction: Millennium State is off-frame to the SE. This northern part is called Millennium City.
Above: reference map, from a dated satellite view (Google Maps) with more recent additions marked roughly in white. 11-story towers 1-6 (my numbers) completed and occupied before the invasion - a 15-story finishing block to the south was nearing completion - final plan was to have it look like this from the south (right).Continent center was still occupied by Russian forces on the afternoon of March 29th - or in a drone image posted that night (possibly taken on a previous day, in what seems to be overcast early afternoon sunlight) - LiveUAMap - Twitter
But they were apparently in the process of vacating: "In Bucha, Russian troops moved everything what they've looted in Continent residential complex towards Blystavitsa - property owner" - as if they were now gone, or were partly gone - taken as "confirmation that some Russian troops indeed leaving positions in Kyiv region."
Checking my pretty inclusive archive of satellite and drone views, there are none from before March 23 that show this area, in much detail or at all. Azov Battalion drone views show it variously between March 23 and 30, from a distance at the same angle where we can see external activity along the west side. AFVs and military trucks are marked in red (5 total), mostly appearing the 24th, One seen in the above image is at the pink box here, where it may not be present yet (this image was taken earlier in the day). Some cars are marked in gold in gold, another left in the entrance in lime green. On 3/30 the cars remain, but just one tank remains (green arrow) - it moved a meter or so and it was left.
Just a few signs of violence are visible from here - building 2 hit (red box - smoke stains present by 3/23), and some damage in the street below it that has a likely crater visible the whole time (orange dot), and some greasy splatter around it that's maybe just clearer when it's rained (3/30, orange box), or it might be newer. Unless something was added, the violence behind these marks was all done before the 23rd. There's other damage we'll look at that's not as clear, but most likely also complete by the 23rd.
So they apparently left by driving, not getting blown up. But it's when they arrived and what happened after are the subjects of interest here.
First Arrival
What's more interesting than Russians shooting at the Continent center is their military occupation of the buildings, whereafter shooting at the place should logically be by the Ukrainians. Russian forces reportedly arrived nearby on March 3 and then seriously occupied the area, and the whole city, by the 5th. But they may well have expanded their presence at certain spots after that.
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, April 11: "Russian reinforcements arrived several days later in an aggressive mood. They set up base in an apartment complex behind School No 3, the main high school on Vokzalna, or Station Street, and posted a sniper in a high-rise building still under construction."
The time frame is specified in the article as March 5 (several days after the massive defeat of Feb. 27). The "apartment complex" probably refers to the Continent center, just north of the school, with its unfinished high rise at the south end. It sounds like they arrived there on the 5th, but that isn't spelled out like it is (in other articles) with their arrival at 33b Tsentralna, where they would set up a local headquarters.
In fact, all we have for Continent specifies a later arrival. A Babel.UA timeline includes "They came here, it seems, around the 9th [of March], — says Oleksiy, a resident of the Continent residential complex in Bucha. — At first, around ten people came. Most likely, it was an assault brigade. And in four or five days [approximately March 13-14], mortar teams arrived. There were six small mortars and seven small infantry fighting vehicles. They placed their infantry fighting vehicles between the houses. Only shells were brought." Eventually we would be at least 10 AFVs and a few trucks, so more may have arrived after the 13th-14th.
There was some early violence here, evidenced by broken windows at the offices of internet provider Best. Mainly just outer panes were broken, except one that was all removed, since boarded over. Best ISP owner Oleksii Zinevich shared the photo. (Ukrainian National Rada) The same scene was also photographed by local Dmytro Tkachuk, perhaps on his way out of Bucha on March 6, and maybe earlier, but not later. (euromaidanpress - props to Qoppa for noticing both images)
Location: deduced by Qoppa as on the northeast corner of tower 1's ground floor, on the north face (views of tower 1 recessed, 2 roofs, presence of circular planters lacking on the east side). Olga Reznikova's video shows a sign and a wi-fi booth by an entrance on the east side of the same corner.
Electric Station Attacks
The strongest blasts in the area may have predated this arrival around the 9th, at the electricity sub-station just north of Continent, where at least two armored fighting vehicles were obliterated. It's possible these were early attacks, by Russians against Ukrainian tanks based there. But there's no word or sign of that, and it happened roughly as or after the Russians were in control, so it's probably a Ukrainian attack on Russian vehicles.
A massive drone view Qoppa had saved shows the area in April, with my labels added.
A basic idea of debris spread from both tanks hit (stars), with pink circles for worst fragment spread (circles assuming no directionality), plus the other likely hits. 4 blasts along the fence, some with radii overlapping - and this placement is just approximate - might help explain the wall damage. But otherwise, blast D isn't even certain - it just looks possible and makes sense.On the right, there were at least two and probably three major blasts inside a formerly walled area, knocking out the concrete fence almost totally, with just a teetering remnant of coulns at the bend. Probably some kind of powerful rocket, missile, or heavy artillery was used. Spot C had an AFV, with a large remaining piece - mainly the left side wheels and tread - visible in a closer photo at right - one building was directly hit, visible in the background there.
H: Rebuild Ukraine Bucha damage report shows damage at spots F and G and at least one more clear impact H (top, left of center), taking out some fence and starting a fire inside, as happened at impact F. The direction of artillery fire isn't clear from this, bur likely the same as the others.
Finally, a dead man lays just outside the electric station, east of the damaged areas, - this seemed too far to connect, was outside the intact wall, but the red car was probably affected, and its bumper ... flew almost to him, as if ricocheting after the tank blast hit it, some other debris flew past (a jagged bit, lower left), and likely some flew right into him.
How? Never mind the bumper - they came over the fence. A small tree just ahead of him was decapitated. He probably had the same happen. Or got to keep most of his head, just not enough to stay alive.
Minimum ranges I see around for popular models include 70, 100, and 200 meters. In general, 3 views from a Reddit discussion put the minimum mortar ranges much shorter: "minimum range is like 10-20m" - "Minimum 15" - "According to my experience, the minimum range of mortar is around 36m." Shortest range almost seems to be how safe you feel with it coming down there.
So a sort-range, probably light mortar, with shells of limited power, as far as I know, is the best explanation for these craters. They can't take out tanks, I presume, but might kill some Russian soldiers, perhaps ones who came out to check for survivors after one of the tank attacks. It also might have happened later, or earlier. Sneaky things can be like that.
Especially at these short ranges, mortar shells can arc high and descend almost vertically, so when targets are hit in between tall buildings, very few angles and only the shortest of ranges can be ruled out.
Signs: quite a few marks of shelling between the building, analyzed below - mostly minor, like little bullet holes, and fairly random, hard to read patterns with - likely because it's short-range fire with little incoming angle, which is how I estimate direction of travel.
Cars were intentionally flipped as barricades, propped up with timbers, and not for no reason - they saw shelling attacks, and might have expected close-quarters gunfights. Some barricades show how they did their work. The Russians might pick out cars already damaged to flip, and then they suffer new damage that only makes sense in this position (yellow - might be dented on the driver's side, prior to the damage all along its hood and roof), The black van probably took a few hits as a barricade, after some as a vehicle.
Now Ukraine could only hit them with short-range mortars, but you can't do that from Irpin - that would take getting up close.
Getting Up Close?
Officially, Ukrainian forces were not in control of any part of the city after March 4 or 5, and implicitly had no military presence at all, although they don't explicitly deny it that I know of, and I wouldn't believe the denial if they did. I can't prove that armed groups of them capable of mayhem were present anywhere, but assembled a case for it ... In Death in Bucha's Gray Zone part 9, I mapped possible areas on control or operation and considered fake Russians might have been running the base at 221b Yablunska and east of there - depth of cover suggests they'd try to occupy buildings to the east and attack from there, if they were to attack the Continent complex.
БУЧА.ШОК.BUCHA.06.04.22 (Bucha Shock)
Буча – что там произошло на самом деле? Истории выживших. July 25 (stories of survivors)
Буча. Главный символ преступлений российской армии в Украине - YouTube
First, the north corners between 1 & 2 as already looked at: damage to north faces, east faces of building 2 to a point = from the northeast, likely from tank destruction. Note on the right two large tears in the gray wall of building 2 (corresponding to residential floors 1 & 2) and a large patch of cladding is gone from floor 5, seemingly right above that.
The two big tears in the cladding above are seen close up in Reznikova's video at 16:33 - exposed, small-seeming bricks beneath - we'll be seeing this a lot. The bottom one has a riveted piece of steel like from a tank embedded deep in the concrete.
The other tear probably has the same cause, as do other marks in this area - the same that damaged this car and set it ablaze, leaving on the worst burnt-out wrecks I've seen around.
However, the larger damage above those 2 scrapes - and most of the other damage throughout, is probably not from that, but from shelling directed at the buildings. Again, the complex was occupied by Russian forces, so those attacking them would presumably be some part of the Ukrainian armed forces, who officially had no such presence here.
The opposite facade - west side of building 3 - has a lot of broken windows and light fragmentation marks, but as far as I've seen, no direct impacts like the 4 across from it. The clear suggestion here is fire from the east and not from the west. (Nagorny 7:13)
Building 2, east side: this spot is on the right line to suffer some tank blast damage, and it might have, but it looks just like one of the above marks transplanted onto the next building - again, a sharp start to the damage on a nearly-horizontal line, with a curving patch of cladding scraped away beneath that. Some bits fall away in later views.
1 south - the same patterns above don't quite apply - if the same direction does, then this impact from the east would be closer to parallel with the wall to the clean "upper" edge would be a right-upper edge. There's no clear line there, just where the cladding changes - an arbitrary local development. after cleanup, some more cladding removed above - presumably damaged or loosened anyway - the kind of line I'd expect is more evident, but perhaps pointing more to the right than it should (more arbitrary local details?). Anyway, more or less: another hit from the east.
Building 4, south side, near the basketball court -
This is similar to the above ...but even cleaner corner effect - impact with a south wall (right, oblique) and an east wall (left, more direct) - clearly closer to parallel than perpendicular - clean edge angles down, going with an incoming angle from the right, necessary to hit both these walls.
2 south, upper 10th floor balcony - yet another corner impact, this one taking out a balcony - not seen well and the pattern isn't so clear - the balcony is just gone - some damage to the left seems to be on the same line - what we can see for the yellow line looks horizontal = straight-in, or limited on the left by the balcony above (probable). Some blurry damage signs to the right might connect, and are on nearly the same line but a bit lower = again a slope down to the right, albet milder here.
Other Impacts
An interesting impact occurred at the playground behind building 2, well shown in Olga Reznikova's video. There are a lot of different marks, but a clear pattern emerges with the heaviest marks that punch through fibergalss and metal and tear through wood like airborne buzzsaws - it seems this shell hit the slide - no explosive crater around - may have used a proximity fuze to detonate just before contact, so the slide impact is all mechanical and heat damage from the spent shell. Several oblique impacts due to its angle - wooden parts of the playground were cut the worst in a basic pattern of low to high ... all through the playground from there - slicing wood lower on the left/south, angling higher north to the back wall of 2, where it angles up right to left - continuing in the next image that shows some higher yet damage and a clearer view of the rising marks on the wall they go with - this band should be roughly perpendicular to the shell's incoming angle, which is partly aimed into this south-facing wall, but more so from the right, so closer to parallel with the wall = from local SE or actual east.Reznikova video 12:15-12:30 - pavement between 2 & 4 - a crude "splash" or "rose" pattern in bricks isn't terribly clear, but might suggest travel from back to building 4's NE corner, or pretty much from the southeast - frag pattern on near wall seems consistent (low and dense) - the opposite side not so clear.
Building 2, west side: there isn't much damage to the outsides of the buildings at all, from the east or the west. But there is this one puncture of a 7th floor window that started a big fire inside. Photo below was from a Censore.net article. See also Bucha Shock 22:40 Smoke stains visible in drone footage from 3/23 forward - some roofline damage above and to the right - if connected, that might suggest an origin from left of straight in. Otherwise, it could be fired from the west, southwest, or south. It's not clear this connects to the mid-March shelling. It might be a tank shell fired at some Ukrainian snipers, say on March 3-5, or possibly back on Feb. 27 when they were also shooting around Best ISP on Continent's north side.
3 north: possible hit on an AFV that was able to leave, but lost a utility box (red) and some other bits that scraped the walls and broke the windows. A very few fragments also hit the wall. Unclear to me. (Nagorny 6:09)
Roofs and rooflines: one I cannot place yet, or call directions, so I didn't bother reading the splash pattern and crater (foreground, mostly covered), or the dense frag marks ahead of that, and the angled line of the removed cladding.
4 NW upper corner roofline - likely hit from the west to northwest (not southwest) - may be early, as with 1 west, above - likely Russian fire, from before they ran the place.3 east middle roofline - see below.
Best ISP - east side - ground floor window hit on the bottom frame - otherwise, the east side suffered no direct hits like those seen on the inner faces. Most windows out on the left, probably from the tank blast C passing obliquely over this corner - but there's no sign of direct damage from that, even in a closer view, except north-facing surfaces. Maybe the blast just blew through these windows from inside. Some other windows out might result from the noted or other unclear blasts, or rifle shooting from the east.
There are other impacts, but most aren't clear and this seems like plenty for now. Anything clearly useful or especially interesting I notice will/might be added later.
A scene map with all noted impacts placed ... impact locations are a bit approximate, and shown angles of fire are mainly estimated, but should be close to reality - the most interesting ones - the scraping wall impacts are the red lines on the east and south faces - explained next. ...
Reading the "Scraping" Impacts
The east and south faces of buildings 1, 2, and 4 bear some marks - seven that I've noticed - with a characteristic shape: a sharp upper edge to the damage and a more ovular area of damage and peeled facade below it - straight in would leave even circular marks - a highly vertical impact might create this different shape - crude sketch at right - the blast force is mainly straight out from the tube, but angled forward with trajectory - when this is mainly down, the overall force will project down the face, scraping it for some ways. Other parts of it, and its hurled primary fragments, will fly down and out, into the space here and the Russian soldiers and armor occupying it.The scraping impacts, especially those on building 4, seem the most telling. Here are the 4 on its east face skewed to match an orthogonal view and allow a basic measure of that sharp upper line. All appeared similar and they are, but I measured a real difference between those on the left (9-9.5 degrees counter-clockwise from horizontal) and on the right (both 13.5 degrees). These angles probably aren't exact, but to be so similar, the real angles must be fairly close. As drawn above, these are 9 and 13 degrees from perpendicular.
This difference makes sense for attacks from a common point. ... these exact angles, from the approximate impact points, converge about 95 meters from the wall, or 50m outside the complex. The true angles might intersect further out and a bit north or south. I'm not declaring a firing spot yet, but I'm sure it's in this small area, 100-200 meters out.
So ... mortars fired from the east of building 4 - somewhere in, on, or near Millennium City, or even from the road or parking lot. The building 2 impact looks a bit divergent when I eyeballed its angle I on the same template in a throw-away image, and got that angle (11 degrees from perpendicular, I think it was). It might line up with a better reading, or diverge further and come from a different spot ...like the south end of the new shops.
South faces hit from a different area a similar distance to the southeast - perhaps next to the unfinished building if that were possible, or the roads or fields nearby.
1 east - as noted - many windows out, no blast signs generally, so likely gunfire - mortar crews fired at, fired back - across the way, in Reznikova's video, we can see perhaps some of the same, but not much sign of shelling damage in return - she thought they looked fine, but she noticed the shops got smashed in, maybe by looters, she says surely Russian - the shop on the right/south end seems burned out, its sign vanished, maybe like it was shelled, albeit with little structural damage we can see. Millennium City is a bit far off to the right, no damage visible from here, and windows unclear - Tarasivska 8a in the middle, no clear damage, but a lot of open or missing windows - closer up, only a few possible marks appear - some missing window frame right behind the burned shop (turns out it was like that since the 2020 video). Closer up, we could see more. That's just where the mortar impact on building 2 might have been fired from - that line, ~160m. Hmmm. Did they get this close?
On the left, in the distance, Tarasivska 10b, did get some hit and a fire (yellow) - off-frame in all my maps - on a good line for building 2 mortar fire as well - ~400m ENE of building 1 - but maybe too far to achieve the kind of descent needed.
That inset drone views show some tracks driven around this store prior to the 23rd, like the Russians drove up to counter-attack or to investigate later. But that could also be earlier and coincidental. Novus damage .... to note a bit more ... Qoppa has some images showing the hole blasted in the roof - I haven't clarified the scene or directional clues yet. but Qoppa thinks it came from the southeast. It's a plausible base of attacks on Continent to be hit in return, or maybe another Russian post the Ukrainians attacked - either way, Ukrainian forces capable of things like this were in here in mid-March. What else were they responsible for here? Where else were they, and what did they do in those shadows of Bucha's gray zone?
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