German intelligence intercepted radio exchanges between Russian soldiers who discussed killing civilians outside Kyiv, potentially bolstering evidence that Kremlin forces carried out atrocities, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday.
German officials, who presented the intelligence to lawmakers in Berlin on Wednesday, say the intercepts indicate that the murder of civilians in the town of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital was not an act by rogue forces, but may have been part of a deliberate strategy to foment terror, the magazine said. Russia has said that images of civilian corpses found in Bucha after the Kremlin’s withdrawal were staged.
The U.S. imposed a fresh set of sanctions and the European Union is assembling its own raft of measures after the allegations of killings carried out by Russian forces that global leaders, including President Joe Biden, have called war crimes.
