BUCHA,
Two minutes later, a pleading, gagged voice pierced the morning stillness. Then the merciless reply: “TALK!!! TALK f--ing mother-f--er!!!”
It was a cold, gray morning,
What happened that day in Bucha was called “zachistka” by Russian soldiers on intercepted audio calls — cleansing. The Russians hunted people on lists prepared by their intelligence services and went door to door to identify and kill potential threats. The Associated Press and the
Police ended up recovering nearly 40 bodies along Yablunska street alone. Prosecutors have so far identified 12 around 144 Yablunska; AP reporters documented a 13th body in the stairwell of one of the buildings in the complex, in photos and videos taken on
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As part of a joint investigation, the AP and “Frontline” reviewed hundreds of hours of video from surveillance cameras in Bucha and verified audio recordings of phone calls by Russian soldiers with The Dossier Center, a
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On
In the chaos of the Russian advance, eight Ukrainian checkpoint volunteers got separated from the others. They ducked into a pale brick house nearby and listened in silence to the searing crack of rifles and rumble of Russian tanks.
Around
Not long after, Russian soldiers broke down the door of the house and hauled nine men away, accusing them of helping
Soldiers forced them to their knees. Then taxi driver
Over the next few hours, soldiers delivered more and more people to 144 Yablunska, including 20-year-old Dmytro Chaplyhin, a baby-faced store clerk who everyone called
“Grandma, don’t worry!”
It was the last time she saw him alive.
When the Russians marched
Shaken, Volynets didn’t immediately notice that her own son, Slava, was also kneeling in the line of doomed men. She finally recognized him by his jacket and pants. He’d taken a blow to the ribs and was breathing heavily.
She panicked, desperate to negotiate Slava’s release. The Russians brought a young man over to take a close look at Slava.
“Is it him?” they asked.
“No, not him,” the young man answered.
Slava lived. The Russians let most of the civilians go that day, but not the volunteers.
Skyba was hit in the face so hard it knocked his teeth out. His eyebrow split open, and blood gushed down his face. Russians tied his hands with tape behind his back, put a bucket over his head and kneeled him against a wall. They beat his head until he lost consciousness.
“What should we do with them?” Skyba heard a Russian say. “Kill them,” another answered. “But take them away first so they’re not laying around here.”
Russian soldiers led the volunteers around the corner to a small courtyard where there was already one dead body. Then two soldiers started shooting.
Skyba felt a bullet pierce his side, and he hit the ground. He pretended to be dead, terrified the Russians would see his exhalations cloud the cold air.
“I was waiting for the darkness,” he said. “Terrible ... I cannot explain ... Just terrible.”
Once it was silent, Skyba worked his wrists out of the tape that bound them, crawled through the corpses of his comrades and stole boots from the body of the only man who still had them on. He ran to a neighboring house.
Then he heard voices. Russians.
“Is anybody here in the house?” a man called. Skyba pretended to be the owner.
Believing him to be an injured civilian, the soldiers took him back to 144 Yablunska, this time for medical treatment, Skyba said. They led him to the basement, where more than 100 people were being held.
For the next three days, Skyba huddled there, telling no one about his bullet wound. The only toilet was broken. Children cried. Adults prayed.
On
Russian soldiers told their families on phone calls about the carnage. One soldier named Maksym told his wife on
Now, the families of Bucha are waiting for a justice that may or may not come. Dvornikov's wife, Truba, along with Skyba and relatives of two other people killed at 144 Yablunska, has filed a case against
“All the civilized world must recognize it was murder,” she said. “I want to prove it’s not fake and that it really happened.”
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