Ukraine honors anniversary of Bucha liberation, recognizes atrocities
Mike Brest
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Ukraine recognized the anniversary of the liberation of Bucha, a town near the capital of Kyiv, on Friday.
Shortly after Ukraine’s military pushed Russian forces out of Bucha last year, local officials discovered horrific scenes of alleged torture, abuse, and execution of Ukrainian civilians. The discoveries in Bucha were the first in a pattern of alleged war crimes that repeated itself whenever Ukraine retook Russian-occupied territory.
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President Volodymyr Zelensky participated in a ceremony near the Church of the Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called and All Saints in Bucha to commemorate the residents of the city who were killed.
“Russian evil will collapse right here in Ukraine and will never be able to rise again. Humanity will prevail,” Zelensky said, leading a ceremony at which the Ukrainian flag was raised, per Reuters.
He was joined by the President of the Republic of Moldova, Maia Sandu; Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, Eduard Heger; Prime Minister of Slovenia, Robert Golob; Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenković; and Chairman of the Verkhovna, Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk, among others.
“When Bucha was de-occupied, we saw that the devil was not somewhere out there but on the ground. The heinous truth about what was happening in the temporarily occupied territories was revealed to the world,” Zelensky added.
In some of the most disturbing allegations, international investigators found torture chambers in a summer camp and mass graves where civilians were found executed. They concluded that Russians likely waterboarded prisoners as they were tied to bed springs leaned up against the wall.
More than 1,400 civilians, including 37 children, were killed during Russia’s roughly one month of occupying Bucha district by Ukrainian authorities, Zelensky said, according to the Associated Press. More than 175 people were found in mass graves and alleged torture chambers.
Russian forces’ actions during the war in Ukraine amount to a “litany of violations of international humanitarian law,” a Human Rights Watch report from January found.
“After Ukrainian troops forced the Russian military’s withdrawal from Bucha … the U.N. found that at least 70 civilians had been the victims of unlawful killings, including summary executions, which are war crimes,” the HRW report said. “This pattern of Russian atrocity has been repeated countless times.”
Russian leaders have denied their role in the killings.
Bucha is now far from the front lines of the war that is now in the east. Ukrainian and Russian forces have spent months fighting over the town of Bakhmut, which poses limited strategic value. Both sides have lost overwhelming numbers of soldiers in the battle that is still ongoing.
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Zelensky said days ago that he believes the will of the Ukrainian people to keep fighting may be on the line with Bakhmut.
“Our society will feel tired” if they lose Bakhmut, he said. “Our society will push me to have compromise with them.”