Using exclusive phone logs, military files and 23TB of video, we unmasked the Russian unit and commander that killed dozens of people on one street in Bucha

By @YousurAlhlou @MashaFroliak @ckoettl @heytherehaley @dim109 @ajcardia @NatalieReneau & more 👇
www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/video/russia-ukraine-bucha-massacre-takeaways.html

Reporters @YousurAlhlou @MashaFroliak spent months in Bucha interviewing residents, collecting security camera & drone footage and reviewing records from Ukrainian officials. In NYC, colleagues analyzed the materials to reconstruct the killings along Yablunska St to the minute.

Evidence places one Russian unit, the 234th Air Assault Regiment, at the scenes of the killings at the time they happened. Call signs we heard in security footage link the highest leaders of the regiment to crimes.

Vehicle numbers and symbols that @ckoettl identified in CCTV along the street also implicate the 234th. They enabled him to trace those vehicles to training exercises of the 234th in 2020, and again as they amassed in Feb. 2022 to invade Ukraine.

Critical evidence were the cell phones of Ukrainian victims — which Russian soldiers used to call home within hours of executions. @YousurAlhlou and @MashaFroliak got call logs, and used the Russian numbers dialed to identify soldiers, speak to some and their family members.

They identified 22 soldiers in the 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment who used the phones of six victims killed along Yablunska Street for weeks. nyti.ms/3GdnZHx

The investigation relied on the research and extensive translation over months of documents, text messages, social media posts by @msalexkoroleva, Oksana Nesterenko and Milana Mazaeva. Reporting on military units and commanders by @ckoettl @evanhill and @julianbarnes.

Finding out what happened and who was responsible for the killings in Bucha was the ultimate goal. In the effort to trace phone calls to Russia, Yousur and Masha thru relentless sourcing also obtained 4,000 intercepted calls to Russia. "Putin is a Fool" 👇 www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/28/world/europe/russian-soldiers-phone-calls-ukraine.html

Witnesses to one execution were consistent in their testimony. When we obtained video evidence supporting that, we ran this story in May proving that Russian soldiers executed six prisoners of war and two civilians. It would take more time to ID the unit. www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/world/europe/russia-bucha-ukraine-executions.html

You can see all of our investigations on Bucha — and sign up for email alerts — on the Visual Investigations homepage here 👇

www.nytimes.com/spotlight/visual-investigations

More here in this 🧵 by @YousurAlhlou, including on the call signs of commanders we detected in CCTV recorded outside the building they took as a base

Our 29 min film is now on YouTube. It uses hard evidence to name a Russian unit — and commander — behind atrocities in Bucha. While disturbing in parts, it focuses on the evidence (including calls to Russia made using victims' phones).
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrGZ66uKcl0