"They shot either in the back of the head or in the heart." The story of an eyewitness to the executions of the inhabitants of Bucha in the occupation
04/03/2022
The body of a man with his hands tied, lying on the ground in Bucha, abandoned by the Russian army after a month of occupation. April 3, 2022
Photo: Vadim Girda / AP Photo
After the retreat of Russian troops from Bucha, photographs of mass graves and executed civilians appeared on the Internet. According to Ukrainian authorities, at least 280 people have been killed here in the past month. The satellite city of Kyiv itself is almost completely destroyed. "Vot Tak" spoke with a local resident Vladislav Kozlovsky, who was an eyewitness to the actual executions of local residents and lived in the occupied city for a month.
Whom and for what were the Russians shot?
Vladislav, how did you end up in occupied Bucha?
Last year I lived and worked as a sommelier in Kyiv, but after the outbreak of war I returned to the Steklozavod (Bucha) area, where my mother and grandmother live. On March 2, the occupying troops entered our city, I was near the headquarters of the territorial defense with several friends. Everyone who did not have weapons was ordered to hide in a bomb shelter near the base. She was protected by two doors. The invaders knocked out the first one, we opened the second one ourselves, because we understood that they would break in anyway and then they could simply kill everyone. Among them were mostly Russians and Belarusians, they are easy to recognize by their characteristic dialect.
Vladislav Kozlovsky
What happened next?
They snuck into our bunker, the first days they treated us well, helped with food. But they were brainwashed by propaganda, and normal people would not come to a foreign land. At that time, there was intense fighting in the city and they would not let us out. We were sitting in complete darkness. There was no light, water, or heat, of course. Then others took their place. On March 7, they brought out first women and children, then men.
They put us on our knees and started to "search" us. I had my money and my watch with me. They took everything, just like the others, so they just robbed me. They knew some of the people, checked their documents, and if a person had participated in the ATO (as they call the period of combat operations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions from 2014 to 2018 in Ukraine) or had been registered with the military, they immediately shot him. Tattoos were also checked, and "Nazis" were looked for. In fact, even those who had the official coat of arms of Ukraine were shot.
They shot them either in the back of the head or in the heart. Among them were Russians and, most likely, Buryats, I got that from their appearance.
How many people in all were killed in your presence?
I think eight of them were shot. I saw their bodies yesterday behind a stone building in a pile of stuff in one of the photos from Bucha.
The bodies of the men killed in Bucha that Vladislav talks about. April 3, 2022.
Photo: Vadim Girda / AP Photo
Were there any questions asked?
For me it was all a blur, it was scary, and I was sure I wouldn't go home again. An acquaintance of mine, who had nothing, was shot in the side and told, "So you don't go home in a big hurry. I was questioned about where ATO veterans or nationalists lived, but I knew nothing and could not answer. I ended up being severely beaten up and hit on the head with a stock.
How were the Kadyrovites different from the rest of the Russian soldiers?
How did the soldiers who occupied the city behave?
A few weeks after the occupation the Kadyrovites came into the city. Except for external signs they differed from the Russians in their uniforms: they were either black or dark green.
For the last week they marched in the morning through residential areas and shot everyone they saw, every day someone had to be buried.
At the end of March they killed our neighbor, a pensioner named Strelets. He was just sitting on a bench, he'd never done anything bad in his life and of course he wasn't a 'nazi.
If the Kadyrovites all behaved in a brutal and barbaric way, the Russians were different. There were a lot of young men among them. Some of them knocked on people's doors and asked for a place to sleep, others simply beat them and threw their owners out on the street.
A TERO soldier near the bodies of four dead civilians covered with a blanket. They were attempted to be burned together on the side of the highway near Bucha. April 2, 2022.
Photo: Mikhail Palinchak / Zuma Press / Forum
I was beaten up for the second time in mid-March. I was sitting at a friend's house, smoking, and a Russian soldier of about 25 came in with a submachine gun, looking drunk, pointed the gun at us and started telling us not to walk in the street, and then sent everyone to bed.
After a while he came back, I was lying in the room closest to the exit, and he yelled: "What, are you defending Ukraine?" - and started beating me. My nose was broken and there was blood all over my clothes. He hit me hard and I even blacked out for a few seconds.
How many of your acquaintances were killed during this time?
I don't divide people like that anymore, I feel sorry for everyone. An acquaintance of mine named Sergey Semyonov, who is about 40 years old, decided to go with a friend through the glass factory to the city of Irpin. Their bodies were found a few days later.
Sergei was killed with a shot to the back of the head, and the other was tortured - his cheek was cut out and his heart was shot, we buried them right on the territory of the plant.
On March 2, five civilians were killed during the fighting for the city: three men, a woman and a pensioner. Their bodies had been lying in a bus for weeks, and we were not allowed to take them out.
In Mariupol, many people are buried near homes and playgrounds. How was it with you?
We were not allowed to go to the cemetery, so we buried the dead where we had to. We loaded the five men from the bus into the bucket of the tractor. While the soldiers were away, the driver drove a little further, dug a hole and buried them all.
Two other men were shot by "kadyrovtsy" when they started the car to go get water. Only a few days later we were able to bury them behind the garages, right in the blankets.
In my house, an elderly man died of a broken heart. They didn't visit him until three or four days after that. He was sitting dead and suffocated in a chair. He, too, was buried in a blanket in the landing.
There were a lot of cases like that, but we couldn't get far from home, and I don't want to retell the rumors. You probably saw the pictures from the city yourself.
How did you eat all that time? Was there enough food?
It was very hard because there was no electricity, no water, no heat. We were lucky that there were private houses with wells in our neighborhood, at least we could get water from there. We cooked our food over campfires: we put bricks and nets on them and people brought food from home and cooked something. We used to share food with everybody, because many people had nothing at all, and there were a lot of elderly people in our neighborhood.
Where are you now? How do you feel?
After the Ukrainian military returned, my family and I managed to leave Bucha via Irpen. Over the blown-up bridge we got to Kyiv, where our acquaintances sheltered us. Of course, during that month we went wild. Even a shower became a luxury for us. I will not forget how people cried at the sight of bread, because they had been starving for a long time.
What they say about the shootings of the residents of Bucha in Ukraine, Russia and the EU
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky published a photo of the dead in Bucha with the caption:
"I advise mothers of Russian servicemen to look. Look what bastards you have raised. Murderers, marauders, executioners."
The Russian Defense Ministry issued its own version of what happened in Buche. It denied that Russian troops were involved in massacres of civilians: "Not a single local resident suffered from any violent actions" when the city was controlled by Russian soldiers. The agency assures that the photos and video footage from the liberated Bucha are "staged by the Kiev regime for the Western media."
NEWS
"Did you want Srebrenica of the 21st century?" Mikhail Podolyak appealed to Western politicians, telling about mass executions in Bucha
03.04.2022 12:49
President of the European Council Charles Michel said he was shocked by the atrocities of the Russian military in the Kiev region. He specified that the European Union is helping Kiev to gather evidence of war crimes and announced that new sanctions against Moscow are being prepared.
French and German leaders Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz promised to investigate the crimes of the Russian military in Bucha and threatened that the Russian authorities would have to answer for what their soldiers had done.
Alik Spiridonov interviewed