Witness: Russian soldiers killed a resident of Bucha and entered their house (Video)

24.02.2023

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When Russian invaders enter your peaceful city, they do not announce their arrival. When civilians come out of a house next to which the Russian army enters the city, they are shot at without warning. This is how Lyudmila’s husband from Bucha was killed. Before that, the completely peaceful family had to stay in the cellar for a week under fire — since February 24, 2022, Bucha has been constantly shelled by tanks and Russian aircraft. Then, for almost a week, Lyudmyla had to persuade the occupiers who had settled in her house to get permission to bury her husband in their garden. Then Lyudmyla was sent to live in a cellar with her neighbors. And then her house was bombed. This is the reality of life after your town is captured by the Russian army.

«They came in through Sklozavodska Street and Yablonska Street. And we did not know that they were already in our yard. My husband came out of the cellar to make a phone call and was killed immediately. They shot him right in the yard on the doorstep of his house. He was lying there dead for five days and I couldn’t bury him. And I was forced back into the cellar and told that I was not allowed to come out. And then they brought in a bete noire — they broke down the gate and put it right in the yard. They threw the gate out on the other side of the house and put another bete noire there», — the woman told reporters six months after Bucha was liberated from the Russian army.

«There were twenty of them in my yard. They came in here, settled down, and told me: "Go to your neighbor’s basement, you will be better off there».

I replied: «That’s not our custom, to come to a neighbor and say that I will live with them».

They brought my neighbor Vitaliy to me.

And Vitaliy said to me: «Lyudmila, come to us. I’m in the basement with my daughter, and you will be with us».

We took some blankets and things from my basement. And my husband Valera is lying here (killed – Ed.). I stayed there in the basement for 4 more days.

Then my daughter came for me.

She came from the residential complex «Continent» and said: «Mommy, all the dead are lying on the streets. It’s horror! Let’s run away from here».

I told her: «How can I leave when your father is lying in the yard? As long as he is lying unburied, I will not go anywhere».

Then she began to persuade them (Russian soldiers – Ed.). She said: «Let my mom go».

And they said: «So let’s bury her, tell us where».

«They dug a hole in the garden, wrapped him in a blanket, and buried him there. And then my daughter and I left, she has two children, and went to the evacuation to the Khmelnytsky region. And in April we came back (a month after Bucha was liberated from the Russian army – Ed.) My husband was dug up and taken for examination. We did not know where, who dug him up, why. It was like an unknown body from Vodoprovodna Street. Volunteers were already helping, journalists, city authorities, and everyone in the world, because there are four morgues and they are going around looking for your husband», — Lyudmila recalls with tears in her eyes.

According to the Bucha resident, Russian soldiers brought prisoners to her house and tortured them there.

«In the cellar, there were mattresses on which my husband and I were hiding from the shelling, and later they turned out to be covered in blood and shell casings. Someone must have been shot. And the neighbors from the next house said that they heard people screaming a lot. They set up their headquarters in Vitaliy’s basement. I was in this horror», — says Liudmyla.

It is now known that 458 civilians were killed in Bucha during the Russian occupation.

The analysis of satellite images by journalists of the American newspaper «The New York Times» refutes Russia's claim that the killing of civilians in Bucha occurred after the Russian soldiers left the city. Investigative journalists from «Bellingcat» exposed Moscow's attempts to distort the tragic events in the Kyiv region.