According to local authorities, 458 bodies have been recovered from the town, including nine children under the age of 18. Among the victims, 419 people were killed with weapons and 39 appeared to have died of natural causes, possibly related to the occupation.[1][15] A memorial wall was installed in Bucha with 501 names of killed residents.[16] The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented the unlawful killings, including summary executions, of at least 73 civilians in Bucha.[17][3] Photos showed corpses of civilians, lined up with their hands bound behind their backs, shot at close range.[18] An inquiry by Radio Free Europe reported the use of a basement beneath a campground as a torture chamber.[19][20] Many bodies were found mutilated and burnt,[21][22] and girls as young as fourteen reported being raped by Russian soldiers.[21][23] In intercepted conversations, Russian soldiers referred to these operations involving hunting down people in lists, filtration, torture, and execution as zachistka ("cleansing").[24] Ukraine has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate what happened in Bucha as part of its ongoing investigation of the invasion to determine whether a series of Russian war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed.[25] The massacre was described by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as genocide.[26]
Russian authorities have denied responsibility and instead claimed that Ukraine faked footage of the event or staged the killings itself as a false flag operation,[27] and have claimed that the footage and photographs of dead bodies were a "staged performance".[28] These assertions by Russian authorities have been debunked as false by various groups and media organizations.[note 2] Additionally, eyewitness accounts from residents of Bucha said that the Russian Armed Forces carried out the killings.[37][38][39]
^Litavrin, Maksim (5 April 2022). "Буча. Разбираем российские версии" [Bucha. Parsing Russian versions]. Медиазона (in Russian). Archived from the original on 8 April 2022. Retrieved 20 April 2022.
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