Tatiana Petrovna, 72, reacts as she looks at the bodies of three civilians in the garden of a house in Bucha, Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022. (Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times)
Perhaps it was the way the lifeless bodies, bloodied from bullets and some with their hands tied, had been left lying around or shoveled into makeshift mass graves. Or the reality of seeing them up close in widely circulated photos and videos.
In the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, there have been other atrocities, focusing much of its firepower on the homes and gathering places of ordinary Ukrainians, but the international outrage they provoked has been compounded by the reaction to the revelations overshadowed that when Russian soldiers retreated, many civilians were killed behind near the Ukrainian capital.
Some of the bodies found outside of Kyiv over the past weekend were lying face down, while others were curled up. Civilians appear to have been killed on their bicycles while walking down the street or in the basements of houses. In Bucha, where many of the dead were discovered, three bodies were found in a garden.
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Many of the victims had been shot in the head. A coroner in Bucha said his team collected dozens. The Russians fired on everyone as their tanks rolled through the city in the early days of the war, some residents said.
Russian officials denied responsibility and dismissed the photos of corpses as fabricated, but satellite images taken of Bucha and other cities during the Russian occupation disproved their claims.
Analysis of the satellite images by The New York Times showed points in the exact coordinates where the bodies were later found in the newly liberated areas by Ukrainian forces and journalists. This confirmed reports from witnesses who said many had lain there for weeks.
The summary killings of civilians add to the growing body of evidence of numerous flagrant violations of the laws of war by Russian forces, as detailed in the Geneva Conventions and the International Criminal Court’s definitions of war crimes.
War crimes prosecutors have a steep hill to climb. But international law experts say the harrowing images of civilians being shot dead in Bucha and other towns evacuated by the Russians, along with testimonies from witnesses, could provide a treasure trove of documentation for investigations.
The story goes on
Unlike other horrors of the Ukraine war, such as the bombing of a maternity hospital, the destruction of a theater where people were taking refuge, or the shelling of apartment buildings, the Bucha killings could not be seen as unintended harm or simply denied by Russian propaganda.
“What’s different here is that you have pictures of civilians with their hands bound and executed — that’s a completely different type of crime,” said Alex Whiting, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who has worked on international war crimes prosecutions. “That looks very much like a crime.”
Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, which has collected evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, said the killings caused so much shock in part because many of the other civilian deaths in the war were caused by indiscriminate shelling and bombing raids – although that is no less an atrocity.
“I think one of the reasons local people react differently to these bodies is the suspicion that these victims weren’t indiscriminate, they were premeditated,” she said.
When Russia began the invasion on February 24, there were widespread expectations that its superior strength would quickly subdue Ukraine. But, meeting fierce Ukrainian resistance, the Russians soon resorted to full-scale bombing and rocket fire, making little or no distinction between civilian and military targets, and razing some or all of the towns and cities to the ground.
In a way, legal experts said, the images of civilians being shot at close range convey a more personal malevolence.
“I suppose when you see a destroyed city, you think that’s what happens in war,” said Andrew Clapham, a professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and one of the Ukrainian government’s advisers. “People kind of expose their horror and say it might be explainable in wartime.”
But the deaths outside of Kyiv, he said, showed intent to kill civilians.
“It’s a lot more obvious that there’s no excuse,” Clapham said.
Here is a geographical breakdown of where some of the worst atrocities in the war in Ukraine were reported:
Mariupol
The southeastern port, one of the first targets of the Russian invasion, has been under siege for weeks, with little food, water or electricity, and its once population of 450,000 has dwindled to 100,000 or fewer, by some estimates. A missile attack by Russia on March 9 severely damaged a maternity hospital and left an undetermined number of victims. A Russian bombing raid on March 16 destroyed the Mariupol Drama Theater, where hundreds of civilians had taken shelter and where the word “children” was written in large letters outside to deter air raids. Ukrainian officials said 300 people were killed inside. On March 21, Ukrainian officials said the Russians had relocated up to 4,500 residents from Mariupol to Russian territory — which, if confirmed as forced relocation, would constitute a potential war crime.
Kharkiv
The 1.5-million city in eastern Ukraine, the country’s second largest, has been subjected to Russian airstrikes with rockets, artillery and cluster munitions, widely banned weapons that disperse bombs over a wide area. According to residents and videos confirmed by the New York Times, Kharkiv’s demolitions included elementary schools and apartment buildings. Ukrainian officials recently estimated at least 500 people were killed. And Human Rights Watch, in a Sunday report on possible war crimes in Ukraine, said it documented at least one case of rape by Russian soldiers in the Kharkiv region on March 13.
Chernihiv
The northern city near the border with Belarus was a temporary haven for many civilians trying to escape Russia’s early urge to encircle Kyiv. But Russian forces also subjected Chernihiv to relentless airstrikes after Ukrainian defenders prevented the invaders from taking that city. Witnesses in Chernihiv said the Russian attacks destroyed schools, damaged hospitals and hit civilians waiting in bread lines.
Mykolayiv
Blocking the Russian military’s route to the Black Sea port of Odessa, the southern industrial city of 500,000 people has withstood several Russian advances and airstrikes. One destroyed a Navy military barracks killing dozens; others were more random. Rocket attacks have hit apartment buildings. And last week, a rocket attack hit a government building, killing at least 36 people. More deadly attacks on vehicles and homes in and around the city were reported over the weekend and Monday.
Kiev suburbs
Many bodies of civilians were found in suburbs north of Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address on Monday that more than 300 people had been tortured and killed in Bucha alone and that the list is likely to get longer. In its Sunday report, Human Rights Watch reported on the March 4 summary execution of a man from Bucha by Russian soldiers and the killing of a mother and her 14-year-old daughter in another northern town, Vorzel, a few days later.
Sexual violence by the Russian occupiers was also reported. Last month, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said in a Facebook post that a Russian soldier killed an unarmed civilian and then repeatedly raped his wife in a Kyiv suburb.
Laura A. Dickinson, a professor at George Washington University Law School who specializes in international law, said the photos of dead bodies in the Kyiv suburbs are some of the most compelling signs that the Russian side has committed atrocities, regardless of who denial of the Kremlin.
“The evidence is pretty damning, I would say,” she said. “It’s hard to dismiss as fake.”
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