@Zolko et @peaudouce

Le rapport officiel est là.

KILLINGS OF CIVILIANS : SUMMARY EXECUTIONS AND ATTACKS ON INDIVIDUAL CIVILIANS IN KYIV, CHERNIHIV, AND SUMY REGIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION’S ARMED ATTACK AGAINST UKRAINE — Office of the United Nations - High Commissioner for Human Rights — DECEMBER 2022

Killings of civilians in Bucha

Bucha is a town with an estimated pre-war population of 40,000, located five kilometers to the north-west of Kyiv. Since the first days of the large-scale Russian armed attack against Ukraine, Bucha witnessed hostilities involving the use of heavy weapons and episodes of street fighting, which peaked on 3 and 4 March 2022. Russian forces took full control of the town by 5 March and remained there until 30 March.By then, an estimated 5,000 residents remained in the town.

Entering the town on 2 April, Ukrainian security forces and Ukrainian and foreign journalists saw dozens of dead bodies, first on the streets and then in many other locations : in yards, apartments, basements, vehicles, forested areas and improvised individual and collective graves. Many bodies bore signs of summary executions, such as bruises, cuts, bullet wounds, bound hands and burns. Two collective graves containing over 100 bodies were uncovered near the town church, and dozens of improvised graves were exhumed across the town. By 7 April, more than 300 civilian bodies had been recovered ; by 13 September their number had reached 422.

OHCHR first visited Bucha on 9 April, and then undertook 11 additional visits until October 2022. While working on cases in Bucha, OHCHR took every effort to prevent re-traumatization of relatives, survivors, and witnesses, and took due account of documentation and investigative activities by other actors, including law enforcement, human rights NGOs, and media personnel.

By 31 October 2022, OHCHR had documented the killings of 73 civilians (54 men, 16 women, 2 boys and 1 girl) in Bucha between 4 and 30 March 2022. Out of those cases, 24 killings are presented in detail in this report.As of 31 October 2022,OHCHR was in the process of corroborating 105 additional alleged killings of civilians (85 men, 11 women and 9 adults whose sex is yet unknown) in the town.

The majority of killings in Bucha were clustered around a few streets, such as Novoyablonska, Sklozavodska, Tarasivska, Tsentralna, Vodoprovidna, Vokzalna, and especially Yablunska. These streets were near the adjacent town of Irpin, over which Russian troops were seeking to gain control in March, and which had a particularly high presence of Russian armed forces. Local residents risked being shot at for merely appearing on the street. At least 14 civilians (10 men, 3 women and 1 girl) were shot dead and left where they fell over a 150-meter stretch of Yablunska Street.

Individuals driving vehicles inside the town or nearby, and those trying to leave Bucha, were regularly shot at and killed for no apparent reason. Residents were urged (by threats of weapons and verbal intimidation) to remain in basements and in their homes. Basements and households were regularly raided, and ‘suspicious’ individuals, especially men, were questioned about alleged affiliations (current or previous) with Ukrainian armed forces and law enforcement bodies, and about alleged “spying”, notably as to transmitting information about positions of Russian troops. Some civilians were killed on the spot, while others were detained and executed later. As one Russian soldier who had been to Bucha reportedly said : “if locals came to our positions, they were apprehended, interrogated and killed almost immediately”.Local residents reported that some killings seemed completely arbitrary