The investigation of the American newspaper The New York Times revealed another indisputable evidence of the atrocities the Russian occupiers caused in Bucha. The newspaper analyzed three videos that it received.
The first video was shot by a surveillance camera on March 4. In it, the Russian military leads nine hunchbacked Ukrainian prisoners (among them was a man in a bright blue jacket), and a Russian soldier instructs them to go to the right. The newspaper emphasizes that this video is the clearest proof that these people were detained by Russian troops a few minutes before the execution.
The Russian military then took the men outside a nearby office building, which they seized and turned into a makeshift base. The video from the drone, taken a day later, on March 5, is "the first visual evidence to support eyewitness accounts." It shows corpses lying on the ground near the office building at Yablunskaya Street, 144, with two Russian soldiers standing guard next to them. A bright blue spot can be seen among the bodies — it is a jacket of a man recorded the day before.
The Russians shot at everyone, but only Ivan Skyba survived — he was shot in the side and he kept pretending to be dead. Later, when the Russian soldier left, Skyba fled.
Top row from left to right: Anatoliy Prykhodko, Andriy Matviychuk, Andriy Verbovy and Denys Rudenko.
Bottom row from left to right: Andriy Dvornikov, Sviatoslav Turovsky, Valeriy Kotenko and Vitaliy Karpenko.
Who are these men?
The Russian occupiers entered Bucha in February. Later, after regrouping, they returned to the city on March 3. At that time, Ivan Skyba and five other military volunteers were on duty at an improvised checkpoint. Warning by radio that the Russians had returned to Bucha and were moving in their direction, they hid in a house near the checkpoint with its landlord, 53-year-old Valeriy Kotenko. They were later joined by two other fighters, Andriy Dvornikov and Denys Rudenko, who is the man in the blue jacket in the video. While nine men hid, they sent their relatives messages and called them. On the morning of March 4, they realized that escape was impossible. About an hour later, Russian soldiers searched the men and drove everyone out of the house under the barrel of a pistol. Soldiers searched the men for tattoos that could indicate military affiliation and forced some of them to take off their winter jackets and shoes. Then they were taken to the "base" on Yablunska, 144.
Eyewitnesses told reporters that they saw these men in front of the building on their knees and with their shirts pulled over their heads.