Bucha. April 2022

On the first day of the large-scale offensive, my family and I left Bucha, where I have been living since 2017. During the occupation, the Russians committed massacres of civilians, accompanied by cases of looting, kidnapping and torture. These events went down in history as the Buchan massacre.
After the de-occupation, I returned to my city to see everything with my own eyes, document it and see if my house survived. The picture in Bucha was horrific. Houses, ashes, and cars were destroyed everywhere. There was a sweet, cadaverous smell, the smell of burnt iron. Exhumations took place in the city, the dead were dug out of courtyards and mass graves.

Statue of the Mother of God at the entrance to Bucha.

 

On the door of a multi-storey building there is an inscription «Peaceful people and children.»

The door to the room where the Kadyrovites lived.

 

Courtyard of the residential complex «Continent».

 

The bus on which representatives of the Red Cross were supposed to evacuate people from Bucha. During the «green corridor» the bus was fired with mortar fire by the Russians on March 12. As a result, the driver was injured.

 

Russian soldiers destroyed cars of the civilian population. They shot cars from different weapons. All the surviving cars had their wheels punctured so that no one could move around the city.

 

Hole caused by a shell explosion in a shopping mall.

 

The Russian military dismantled and destroyed all road signs that they met on the way.

 

Unexploded mine. After the liberation of the Kyiv region from Russian troops, a significant amount of mines and unexploded ordnance remained.

 

Things killed people on the streets of the city.

 

The torn creature was found in a children’s camp, where the Russians hid for 36 days, committed atrocities.

 

Shrapnel damage to the car.

 

A shelled car with white fabric bands on the sides and a white flag on the roof. A local resident said that the whole family died in this car.

 

 

The Russian military fired on the cars of civilians as they tried to evacuate. The cars still contain the belongings of the deceased owners, and some cars have signs with the inscription «Children» attached to them. Residents hoped that the occupiers would not shoot at cars with children.

 

Bullet holes in the car. The owner of the car saw from the window how a Russian soldier entered the yard and fired at her car, and then randomly people who were in the yard of a multi-storey building.

 

Residential area «Continent».

 

A car with the inscription «children» at the cemetery of the executed cars. Many cars were shot, burned, some have no glass at all.

 

On the roads and streets of the city are the things of the killed people, bicycles, strollers.

 

Shopping center. Russian troops looted shops and shopping malls in the city.

 

Part of a cluster bomb sticks out near a destroyed shopping mall.

 

Damaged residential building as a result of bombing.

 

The bus of representatives of the Red Cross, which was fired upon by the Russians in Bucha during the green corridor.

 

The car in which the Russians shot a resident of Bucha when she tried to evacuate from the occupied city.

 

A burnt-out truck on Buchi Street.

 

Russian soldiers drove tanks into people’s yards, they made camouflage out of broken fences and broken trees. Thus, they hid their equipment from Ukrainian drones.

 

A car shot by the Russians, in which the body of a murdered woman was located for about a month.

 

The apartment burned down as a result of a missile strike.

 

The apartment burned down as a result of a missile strike. st. Yablonskaya.

 

A ransacked shopping mall.

 

In a bloody apartment, the remains of a man torn apart by a grenade were found.

 

The man holds in his hand the shells that hit his apartment.

 

The apartment burned down as a result of a missile strike.

 

Traces of blood in the room where the Kadyrovites lived.

 

Burnt out house. During the occupation, Russian soldiers lived in the house. Before leaving the city, the building was set on fire.

 

During the occupation of Bucha, 243 private houses were actually almost 100% destroyed. These houses are not subject to restoration.

 

Burnt-out cars near the Richtown housing estate.

 

The Russian military lived in the residential complex. From this place they bombed the city of Irpin.

Destroyed garden on Yablonskaya street.

 

Destroyed residential buildings on Vokzalnaya Street. In the first days of the war, Russian soldiers evicted local residents from houses on this street to the common basement of a multi-storey building on a neighboring street.

 

Cars crushed by Russian military equipment.

 

Parts of destroyed military equipment on Vokzalnaya Street.

 

The building was destroyed in an airstrike.

 

There are 22 destroyed high-rise residential buildings in the city.

 

A construction center destroyed by a missile attack.

 

A looted residential complex where the Russian military lived.

 

A man who died from a missile attack lies under a blanket in a destroyed apartment.

 

Basement in the children’s camp. Near this wall were found 5 shot people with their hands tied.

 

Exhumation near a multi-storey building. From the graves they took out an elderly man who died of natural causes and two men shot by the Russians. At the time of death, the men were in a minibus in which they transported water for the residents of Bucha.

As of April 30, 1,080 Ukrainians killed by Russian soldiers were counted in the Buchansk region. 416 bodies were dug up and collected in the city. But this number may be higher.

 

The hill in front of the fence is the grave of an elderly woman who died of natural causes. The daughter, with the help of a neighbor, buried her during the occupation by Russian troops. In the courtyard of a neighboring burnt house, its owner was killed. The Russians buried the owner in the garden.

 

Exhumation of a mass grave. 117 bodies were recovered from the mass grave, including 30 women and two children.

 

Cemetery with freshly dug graves in Bucha.

 

 

Near the residential complex there are boxes for storing shells. The Russian military fired at the city of Irpin from this place.

 

A broken column of Russian military equipment on Vokzalnaya Street.

 

«Cemetery of tanks» in Bucha. There are dozens of destroyed military equipment, as well as burned civilian vehicles.

 

Statue of the Virgin at the entrance to Bucha.