The New York Times published a video investigation about the presence of the 234th Guards Airborne Assault Regiment of the Black Sea under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Artem Gorodilov in Bucha. Journalists spent several months in the city after the withdrawal of Russian troops, interviewing residents, collecting footage from CCTV cameras and footage taken by eyewitnesses and reconnaissance drones.
After that, the investigators reconstructed the events on Yablonskaya Street in Bucha, where most civilians were killed. In total, more than 400 people were killed in the city.
In the investigation, an audio recording of the conversation of the Russian military sounds, one of whom recalls how the commander sent him to kill civilians. On other recordings, you can hear how interrogations are being carried out.
Also, journalists for the first time identified the identity of 30 dead on Yablonska Street. They were people of different ages and professions, among them were children and pensioners. All those killed were either civilians or prisoners of war, which is a war crime.
The video also showed footage of the Russian military deliberately shooting at civilians. That is, these people did not die from artillery shelling. Journalists do not consider the killings to be accidental. In their opinion, it was a deliberate campaign by the Russians to clear their way to Kyiv.
After the retreat of the Russian invaders from the Kyiv region, Lieutenant Colonel Gorodilov received the rank of colonel.
Residents of Bucha told reporters that the Russians were taking civilian phones away from them. The journalists suggested that the Russian military could also take phones from executed civilians, so they asked the Ukrainian authorities for a database of calls from the Buchansk region during the occupation period. Thus, it was possible to establish the names of 22 Russian soldiers from the 234th regiment, who called relatives from the phones of the killed residents of Bucha.
One of the plots of the investigation is the fate of nine members of the Ukrainian territorial defense, who took refuge in one of the houses and were detained by Russian soldiers. On March 4 they were shot. The phones of two of them, Vitaly Karpenko and Ivan Skiba, were used by the Russians to call home. After examining the numbers they dialed and their social media profiles, NYT journalists identified the callers. In total, journalists say, 22 servicemen of the 234th regiment called to Russia from the phones of the inhabitants of Bucha killed on Yablonskaya Street.