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Publicly, the Russian government has denied that its forces committed atrocities while occupying Bukha, a village outside the Ukrainian capital. But in phone calls home, soldiers in the region outside Kyiv spoke of carrying out a deadly “clearance” operation that included killing many locals, including children, who were suspected of helping Ukraine’s resistance to foreign occupation.
“I think I’m going crazy,” a soldier named Maksym told his wife in a March 21 phone call, a recording of which was intercepted and revealed Thursday in a joint investigation by The Associated Press and PBS’s “Frontline.”
In the call, the trooper admitted he had been drinking but assured his wife it would not affect his ability to defend himself.
“It’s easier to shoot civilians,” he said. Indeed, “I have already killed so many civilians.”
At least 400 people were killed when Russia captured Bukha, located 20 miles northeast of Kiev. Their bodies were uncovered when Russia’s attempt to seize Ukraine’s seat of government failed and Moscow ordered a retreat in the first weeks of the war.
Survivors told Insider that Russian soldiers initially acted as if they believed themselves to be liberators, as their government convinced them that Ukraine was run by Nazis. “They thought they came here to save us,” said one resident.
But underpinning the belief that the invasion was an act of liberation was the belief that all who resisted or aided the struggle for Ukrainian sovereignty were fascists deserving of death.
Even children.
In a March 14 phone call, another soldier, named Liona, told his mother about a child who was stopped at a Russian checkpoint. On the boy’s phone, soldiers found information about the “location and logistics” of Russian forces, the AP reported.
“He was shot on the spot,” the soldier said.
In fact, another Russian soldier, Ivan, said in phone calls made between March 17 and 18 that occupation soldiers “shoot everybody, who thinks who it might be: a child, a woman, an old lady, an old man. anyone with guns gets killed. Absolutely everyone.”
