‘Such bad guys will come’: How a Russian brigade terrorized Bucha

BUCHA, Ukraine – When soldiers from Russia’s 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade arrived in Bucha in mid-March, they brought a new level of death and horror to the city.

Over the next 18 days, in just one corner of the Kyiv suburb controlled by the brigade, 12 people were killed, including all residents of the six houses where the soldiers were camped.

Olha Havryliuk’s son and son-in-law, along with a stranger, were shot in the head in their yard. The Russian soldiers broke through the fence of the Havryliuks, parked their armored vehicles in the garden and moved into the house. They cooked in the neighbor’s garden, killed and plucked chickens, and barbecued while the men lay dead in the yard across the alley.

By the time the army pulled out at the end of March, brothers Yuriy and Viktor Pavlenko, who lived down the street, were lying dead in a ditch by the railway. Volodymyr Cherednychenko was found dead in a neighbor’s cellar. Another man, captured by Russian soldiers while running along the track and into the cellar of a house at the end of the street, was also shot dead.

The story of Bucha and its horrors opened many chapters as new revelations about the atrocities committed by the Russians emerged, sparking outrage among the Ukrainian people and around the world. But prosecutors and military intelligence officials soon investigated, gathering evidence to try to identify the perpetrators of mass murders, torture, and rapes in a peaceful suburb. time.

Working with war criminals and forensic experts from around the world, Ukrainian investigators reached some preliminary conclusions, focusing in particular on the 64th Brigade. identified 10 soldiers from the unit and accused them of war crimes.

Ukrainian officials say the brigade was formed after Russia struggled in its war with Georgia in 2008, and that it was awarded an honorary title last month by President Vladimir Putin for its work in Ukraine. .

However, the brigade did little to participate in any skirmishes, coming after other units took control of Bucha and were then tasked with “holding” it. The army set up checkpoints all over town, parked their armored vehicles in people’s yards and took over their homes.

“They imprisoned our people,” said Ruslan Kravchenko, chief prosecutor for Bucha district, describing the actions of the accused soldiers. “They tied their hands and feet and glued them to their eyes. They beat them with fists and feet, with guns to their chests, and imitated execution.”

The names of the 64th Brigade and a list of their 1,600 soldiers were found among computer files left behind in Russian military headquarters in Bucha, providing investigators with an ample resource as they start the investigation. Dmytro Replinchuk at Slidtsvo.info, a Ukrainian investigative news agency, soon find profiles on social networks among dozens of names, including officers.

Mr. Kravchenko said that the three survivors of beatings and torture were able to identify the culprit from the photos.

One of the victims was Yuriy, 50, a factory worker who lived near one of Russia’s most notorious bases, at 144 Yablunska Street. On March 13, a unit of the 64th Brigade came to search his house. He said he was able to identify the soldiers when he was shown the photos by prosecutors. The soldiers were rough and rude, he said. “You can see them coming from the Taiga forest,” he said, referring to the Siberian forest. “They only talk to bears.”

Yuriy tries to avoid suspicion, but on March 19, the soldiers return and arrest his neighbor Oleksiy. Like several others interviewed for this article, the men were asked to identify only their names for confidentiality.

Oleksiy declined to be interviewed but confirmed that he was detained twice by the Russian unit, interrogated in the basement for several hours, and faked execution when soldiers opened fire in his back. Still shaking, he said, “I just want to try to forget it all.”

Created to ‘Scare the Population’

Based in Russia’s far east, near the border with China, the 64th Brigade of the Eastern Military District, has long been considered the most poorly trained and equipped part of the Russian Army.

According to Colonel Mykola Krasny, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, the brigade has ethnic Russian commanders but consists mostly of troops from ethnic minorities and disadvantaged communities.

In radio conversations intercepted by Ukrainian forces, some Russians expressed surprise that village roads in suburban areas of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, were paved, he said.

“We see it as a deliberate policy to mobilize troops from depressed regions of Russia,” Colonel Krasny said.

Not much is known about the brigade, but Colonel Krasny claims that it is notable for its lack of morals, beatings of soldiers, and theft. Made up of a regiment that had served in Chechnya, the brigade was formed on January 1, 2009, shortly after Russia’s war in Georgia, said Col. Krasny. The goal, he added, is clear: build a fearsome military unit that can be controlled.

“The consequences of these politics are what happened in Bucha,” he said. “Without the discipline, and these aggressive habits, it looks like it was made to frighten the populace.”

He claimed that the plight of Russian soldiers and their ability to act with impunity, had caused them to “do the unforeseeable”.

It’s not just the enemy that has to endure their brutality. The Russian military has long been known to hate its soldiers, and on a cell phone left by a member of squad 64 in Bucha, investigators found recent evidence of this behavior: a video in which an officer is talking to his subordinates and after. suddenly punched him in the head while the other soldiers stood around talking.

The Russian government did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations against the 64th Brigade but has repeatedly asserted that allegations its forces committed atrocities in Bucha and elsewhere are false. truth.

Western analysts who have studied the Russian Army say the behavior of the troops in Bucha is not surprising.

Nick Reynolds, a research fellow on land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, a military think tank in London, said: “It fits the way they consider the response. “Retaliation is part and parcel of how the Russian military does business.”

‘Bad Guys’ is coming

Murders have occurred in Bucha from the very first days of the arrival of the Russian army. The first units of airborne assault troops, paratroopers and special forces opened fire on cars and civilians in the streets and arrested men suspected of belonging to the Ukrainian Army or security forces. territory.

The extent of the killings, and the apparent lack of hesitation by Russian troops in carrying out them, has led Ukrainian officials to surmise that they are acting on orders.

“They couldn’t have been unaware,” Bucha’s prosecutor, Kravchenko, said of senior military commanders. “I think the terrorist attack was planned.”

Many of the recorded murders took place on Yablunska Street, where the bodies lay for weeks, visible on satellite images. But not far away, on a corner of Ivana Franka, a particular kind of hell took place after March 12.

Residents have been warned that things will get worse. One pensioner, Mykola, 67, said that Russian soldiers who first arrived in the vicinity advised him to leave while they could. “After us, such bad guys will come,” the commander told him, he recalled. “I think they communicated by radio and they knew who was coming, and they had their own opinions on them.”

Mykola left Bucha before the arrival of the 64th Brigade.

Spring flowers are blooming everywhere in Bucha, fruit trees are flowering, and city workers have been sweeping the streets and filling in some bomb craters. But at the end of Ivana Franka Street, between smashed cars and destroyed houses, there was a strange desolation.

Havryliuk, 65, said: “From house to house, there were no survivors. Only we survived.”

Her son and son-in-law stayed behind to look after the house and the dogs, and were killed on March 12 or 13, when the 64th Brigade first arrived, she said. The death certificates say they were shot in the head.

It’s hard to understand what happened over the next two weeks. A small number of residents remained confined to their homes and only occasionally ventured out to draw water from the well. Some of them have seen people held by Russia.

Nadezhda Cherednychenko, 50, begged soldiers to let her son go. He was being kept in the yard of a house and his arm was injured when she last saw him. She found him dead in the cellar of the same house three weeks later, after the Russians had withdrawn.

“They should be punished,” she said of his captors. “They have brought so much pain to people. I have no children, I have no father, I have no father. That’s something you can’t forgive. “

The neighbors who lived next door to the Havryliuks had just disappeared. Volodymyr and Tetiana Shypilo, a teacher, and their son Andriy, 39, live in one part of the house, and Oleh Yarmolenko, 47, live alone in the other. “They are all our relatives,” Havryliuk said.

Down a small alley are Lidiya Sydorenko, 62, and her husband Serhiy, 65. Their daughter, Tetiana Naumova, said she spoke to them by phone mid-morning on March 22.

Naumova said: “I cried the whole time. “She’s usually an optimist, but I think she had a bad feeling.”

A few minutes later, Russian soldiers arrived and asked to search their garage. They told a neighbor to leave, her feet shot to the ground.

“At lunchtime, they killed them,” Ms. Naumova said.

She returned home with her husband, Vitaliy and son Anton last month after Russian troops withdrew from Kyiv. Her parents were nowhere to be found, but they found ominous tracks – her father’s hat with a bullet hole, three pools of blood and a piece of her mother’s scalp and hair.

There was also no sign of Shypilos or Mr Yarmolenko, except for the bloodstains where the bodies were dragged across their floors.

Finally, French forensic investigators have solved the mystery.

They examined six charred bodies found in an empty street on the street and confirmed that they were the missing civilians: Sydorenkos, three Shypilos and Mr. Yarmolenko. Investigators told the family.

Her father had multiple gunshot wounds to the head and chest, and her mother had an arm and a leg amputated, she said.

“They tortured them, and burned them to cover their tracks,” Ms. Havryliuk said.

Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Bucha, Ukraine.