A visit to the crime scene Russian troops left behind at a summer camp in Bucha
omething terrible happened in the basement of the children’s summer camp in Bucha. The steps leading down to its unlocked door were lousy with trash from Russian army rations: dried macaroni, empty juice boxes, tins of meat. Standing at the bottom of the stairwell, Volodymyr Roslik, the camp groundskeeper, looked up and raised an eyebrow at me, as if to offer one more chance to reconsider going in.
Mourners at a mass grave found at the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in Bucha, April 4they left behind have changed the course of the war in Ukraine. The Russian army’s crimes, described in both Kyiv and Washington as a campaign resembling genocide, have hardened the will of Western governments to arm Ukraine and narrowed the space for a negotiated peace. Leaders from across Europe have come through Bucha to see the devastation for themselves.
Moscow knows how bad this is. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow has accused Ukraine of “staging” the massacre to make the Russian forces look bad. Putin called Bucha a “fake.” His propaganda channels offered theories to undermine the grim reality with doubt. They suggested that crisis actors had posed as corpses in videos of Bucha. They claimed that “foreign mercenaries” came to town and killed people after the Russians withdrew.
Control of Bucha changed hands at least twice before the Russians managed to seize the town in the first week of March. The battle had cost them dearly, and it left them angry. More than a dozen burned-out Russian tanks and personnel carriers stood in the streets. As the Russians dug in, they set up artillery positions in a local school and moved into the dormitories at the children’s summer camp.
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