Belgium (Brussels Morning Newspaper) The German government has several indications that the Russian military was involved in mass killings of Ukrainian civilians in the town of Bucha, near the capital of Kyiv, during the time it was occupied by Russian forces.
A security source told Der Spiegel magazine that the government has satellite images of the area which indicate Russian involvement in the murders, while the German foreign intelligence agency intercepted radio messages from Russian military sources, reportedly discussing the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town.
A number of foreign media reported on gruesome images from Bucha, with bodies left strewn on the streets, unmoved for days, as the Russian forces were pulling out of the town. Western media reported finding more than 20 corpses on the streets, larger groups of bodies buried in makeshift mass graves, groups of civilians with tied hands executed in cellars, and evidence of torture.
According to local officials, more than 340 civilians were killed in Bucha, of which at least 50 were summarily executed. Other victims appeared to have been shot as they were going about their daily lives – one body was lying next to a bicycle, another was holding grocery bags.
A number of burnt or partially burnt carcasses were also found, one group of naked women and a man, covered by a blanket on the outskirts of a city, another group, including a child, next to a children’s playground.
According to Der Spiegel, the foreign intelligence agency BND submitted its findings to the Bundestag on Wednesday. “It’s true that the federal government has indications of Russian perpetration in Bucha,” the BND source told the magazine. “However, these findings on Bucha refer to satellite images. The radio transmissions cannot be clearly assigned to Bucha.”
The German magazine also noted there were additional sound recordings, but that their origin was harder to pinpoint. Regardless of where they originated, however, they appeared to indicate that similar events were taking place in other occupied Ukrainian cities.
