The images bring to mind Srebrenica, the Bosnian town where Serb troops tortured and summarily executed thousands of Bosnians, mostly men and boys, in 1995. The international community branded that horrible chapter of the Bosnian war as genocide, and it’s with the specter of Srebrenica that the world now must investigate the atrocities revealed this weekend in Bucha, a small Ukrainian town northwest of Kyiv.
Bodies of men in civilian clothes lay in the streets, some of them with their hands bound behind their backs. They were shot dead while Russian troops occupied the small town for about a month, Ukrainian officials and witnesses say. Some had gunshot wounds to the head. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even said some victims had been decapitated.
As many as 118 bodies had been buried in mass graves, said the town’s mayor. Some bodies were found stuffed into manholes. Human Rights Watch reported it had documented evidence of repeated rape and summary executions by the Russian military in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions.
