In Bucha, “cruel Russians” shot “a man who was going to the supermarket”

“Right before my eyes, a man who was going to get food from the supermarket was shot.” On BuchaOlena explains to AFP how “cruel” Russian forces, different from regular troops, sowed terror in the town.

Located 30 km northwest of the center of Kyivthe town was occupied by the invading army since February 27 and remained inaccessible for more than a month.

The shelling stopped on March 31 and Ukrainian forces were unable to gain full access until a few days ago.

During the entire month of occupation by Russian forces, Olena, who does not want to give her last name, took refuge with her 7 and 9-year-old children in the basement without electricity of a four-story building. of social housing, in the company of other inhabitants who stayed there.

Some of the bodies found in the streets of Bucha, near kyiv, after the Russian withdrawal (RONALDO SCHEMIDT – AFP/)

“There was no Ukrainian army in the village, only the territorial defense, consisting mainly of guards from local companies, without weapons. And then they fled.” when the Russians arrived, this 43-year-old woman, talkative and with a powerful voice, explains to AFP.

“In the beginning, there were mostly young soldiers [rusos]. Then, two weeks later, there were others. Older, they were over 40 years old. They were cruel. They mistreated everyone. And that’s when the massacres began”, she adds before interrupting her speech, pensive and with a somber face.

Russia He “categorically” denied all the accusations related to the discovery of numerous civilian corpses in this municipality.

“Corpses on blood”

According to Olena, the most seasoned men “were very well equipped, they wore black and dark green uniforms”, different from those of the regular army.

“There were good guys among the Russian soldiers and there were very tough men, especially FSB officers”the Russian security services, says Olena, wearing a red beanie, a fleece jacket, and sports pants and shoes.

The body of a civilian with his hands tied behind his back lies on the street in Bucha as a worker prepares a plastic bag to be carried into a car. (SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP).

“I approached the soldiers to ask them what I should feed my children. And they gave us rations and food. They were the ones who told us that it was the FSB that forbade us to move, that they were very violent special forces. It was Russians who said this about Russians.”

“I myself saw how they shot at people. Right before my eyes they shot a man who was going to get food from the supermarket“, it states.

Only women could go to get water or food. The men were forbidden to go outside and had to stay at home.

“Our neighbors went out to go take out the garbage. It was around 5:00 p.m., there were two men and a woman. One of the men had served in the army. they didn’t come back. They were found by some women from our building when they were looking for firewood in the patio of a house. The corpses were lying on the blood on the ground, with bullet marks”Explain.

A corpse lies on the ground in a street in Bucha, northwest of kyiv. (RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP).

“When the FSB agents arrived, they asked us: ‘Why haven’t you left?’ I told them that I have lived here for 43 years, with a quiet life. Go where? Then, They began to treat us as traitors because we had not marched”.

On Saturday, AFP saw on the streets of Bucha the bodies of at least 22 people in civilian clothes. One of them was lying near a bicycle and another had bags of supplies next to it. A corpse had its hands tied behind its back.

“Common pits”

On Monday, the bodies of five men, also with their hands tied, were found in the basement of a children’s clinic, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office announced.

According to the mayor of BuchaAnatoly Fedoruk, 280 people were buried in recent days in “common graves” given the high number of deaths.

A mass grave is seen behind a church in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital kyiv, on April 3, 2022. (SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP)

In the center of the municipality, on Monday, a street full of about twenty smashed bodies of Russian troop transport vehicles, tank trucks and light armored vehicles, some already rusty, could still be seen in the middle of destroyed houses.

The column was probably targeted by Ukrainian shelling shortly after the Russians arrived in the town in late February.

In the gardens, there were still some areas with the earth and the grass removed, with shell casings scattered around, more or less aligned one against the other, suggesting that artillery had been installed to attack the kyiv region.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said on Monday that there were signs of “video falsification” and “disinformation” in the images presented by the Ukrainian authorities. “Judging from what we’ve seen, we can’t trust these video images,” he said.

Source: Elcomercio