Ukraine claims to have killed Russian soldiers dubbed the “Butchers of Bucha” for their involvement in the rape, torture and mutilation of hundreds of civilians.
Three of the six sheltering Russian soldiers were wiped out in a Ukrainian strike on a house in the occupied region of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on Friday, according to military intelligence.
All six of the soldiers were involved in Russian war crimes on the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in 2022, which saw them dubbed the “Butchers of Bucha,” according to Ukrainian military intelligence.
“The detonation took place in the courtyard of one of the houses where six Russian invaders were with their military transport. In 2022, the indicated Russian occupiers took a direct part in committing war crimes in the city of Bucha, Kyiv region,” the statement reads.
They were serving as a mobile air defense group to provide cover from air attacks to a nearby Russian base and were holed up in a house near the city of Alchevs’k when they were struck, Ukrainian outlet Pravda reported.
Along with killing three Russian soldiers, Friday’s strike destroyed two Russian pickup trucks with machine guns and a UAZ off-road light utility vehicle.
Two other Russian soldiers were also severely wounded, according to Ukrinform, a Ukrainian state-owned news agency.
The Bucha massacre was a series of war crimes carried out by Russian soldiers in the Kyiv suburb in the early days of the war.
The atrocities came to light after Ukrainian forces liberated the city on April 1, 2022.
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The bodies of 458 civilians, including nine children, were recovered from the town, many of them burned or mutilated, according to local authorities.
Girls as young as 14 reported being raped by invading Russian soldiers, who allegedly set up a torture chamber in the basement of a building on a campground in the town, according to an inquiry by Radio Free Europe at the time.
Russian authorities have claimed that the killings were staged as a false flag operation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the events at Bucha a genocide, as he called on the International Criminal Court to investigate Russia’s crimes.
