Ukrainian Police Identify Over 100 Russian Soldiers Who Committed War Crimes in Bucha

Ukrainian police officers have identified more than 1,000 Russian troops who invaded Bucha at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 – including more than 100 military personnel who it alleges committed war crimes.

“The city was under occupation for 28 days. Kidnapping, torture, rape, looting and murder of civilians, including children, is not a complete list of what the Russian military committed there during this time. Ukrainian police officers carefully documented these war crimes for the International Criminal Court,” Ukraine's National Police wrote in a Facebook post on Sunday, March 31.

National Police investigators interviewed hundreds of witnesses and victims, conducted hundreds of interrogations, performed experiments and investigations at the scenes of events, and they studied terabytes of data from external surveillance cameras, Ukrinform reported.

The police say they gathered a detailed array of information about the Russian soldiers who were in Bucha including personal data such as the positions they held in the military, their division by platoons and departments, information on the weapons and equipment they carried, their places of residence, phone numbers and even data about their relatives.

“The information we received allowed us to map the movement routes of the occupiers with a specific time and place, and this, in turn, made it possible to identify the presence of a specific unit at the scene of the crime at the time of its commission. We were able to analyze the complete structure of the occupiers' strike groups of the so-called BTGs (battalion-tactical groups), the structure of their leadership, the types and demarcation of equipment and weapons,” senior investigator Ivan Dulkai said.

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March 31, when much of the world is celebrating Easter, marks the second anniversary of Bucha’s liberation. In Bucha, the world saw some of the first evidence of large-scale atrocities being committed by Russian occupation forces.