The Economist - UK (2022-04-09)

The Economist April 9th 2022 27

Europe

Ukraine

After the battle

T

he lasttime  that  Andriy  Dvornikov
spoke to his common­law wife was on
March 5th. He called, speaking very quiet­
ly,  to  say  he  was  in  trouble.  He  had  been
trapped  at  a  Ukrainian  checkpoint  in  Bu­
cha,  a  suburb  to  the  north­west  of  Kyiv,
when  it  came  under  artillery  fire.  He  was
taking shelter in the basement of a nearby
house along with seven other men. 
One  of  them,  Ivan  Skyba,  described
what  happened  next.  Russian  soldiers
found the group later that day and moved
them to a base. They were told to take their
clothes off and lie face down. Their captors
searched  their  telephones  and  bodies  for
symbols  and  tattoos.  To  make  the  Ukrai­
nians  talk,  the  Russians  killed  one  of
them—  “a  short,  bespectacled  guy  from
Ivano­Frankivsk”, in Mr Skyba’s words.
Mr Dvornikov, who had fought in Don­
bas  in  2015­16,  had  a  paratrooper’s  tattoo.
After  a  few  hours  of  torture,  an  order  was
issued  to  kill  them.  A  soldier  asked  his
commander  what  he  should  do.  The  an­
swer  was  “yebashit”  (  “fucking  do  them
in”), but “do it away from the base.” Mr Sky­

ba  says  they  were  led  to  the  side  of  the

building  and  shot.  He  took  a  bullet  in  his

side, but it went through his body. He sur­

vived  by  playing  dead  on  the  concrete

floor.  As  soon  as  he  heard  there  were  no

voices,  he  fled  over  a  fence  to  a  nearby

home.  Other  Russian  soldiers  later  found

him there, but spared his life. Witnesses in

Bucha  stress  that  some  Russian  soldiers

were polite. “Some of them even said sor­

ry,” says one.

As  Russia’s  “liberators”  have  retreated

from Kyiv back towards the Belarusian bor­

der, they have left a landscape of atrocities.

In all, said Ukraine’s prosecutor­general on

April  3rd,  410  civilians  had  been  killed

around Kyiv. As investigators collected evi­

dence  of  war  crimes  and  bodies  were  put

into  black  plastic  bags,  The Economistwas

able  to  verify  reports  of  what  appears  to

have been a summary execution. 

We found nine bodies lying at the side

of a builder’s yard in Bucha that had been

used  as  a  Russian  base.  All  had  gunshot

wounds to the head, chest or both. At least

two of the victims had their hands tied be­

hind their backs. The smell of decomposi­

tion,  among  other  things,  suggested  they

were killed before Ukrainian forces liberat­

ed Bucha on March 31st.

Such  massacres  have  shocked  the

world. “Genocide”, Ukraine’s President Vo­

lodymyr  Zelensky  called  it.  The  American

president,  Joe  Biden,  said  that  what  hap­

pened  in  Bucha  was  a  war  crime  and  that

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, should

face  an  international  tribunal  for  it,

though  the  chances  of  that  seem  remote.

The  Kremlin  said  the  whole  thing  was  a

“heinous  provocation  of  Ukrainian  radi­

cals” and cynically demanded a un Securi­

ty Council meeting. At it, Mr Zelensky said:

“We  are  dealing  with  a  state  that  turns  its

veto  at  the  un Security  Council  into  [a]

right to [cause] death.” The eu swiftly pro­

posed  new  sanctions,  which  would  ban

Russian coal and close its ports to Russian

vessels.  But  it  stopped  short  of  imposing

an  embargo  on  oil  and  gas  exports,  the

cornerstones of Russia’s economy.

The  atrocities  in  Bucha  fit  a  pattern.

KYIV
As Russian soldiers retreat, they leave evidence of war crimes

→Alsointhissection

28 Ukrainefightsback

30 EducatingUkrainianrefugees

30 Turkishsanction-busting

31 Orban’suglyvictory

32 Charlemagne: Resisting Orban