Thread by Christoph Koettl

twitter.com
1 Mention
1 Collection
Recommend
Post
Save
Complete
Collect
Thread
The videos that came out of Bucha in April are impossible to forget: Dozens of bodies, some with their arms bound behind their backs, strewn along a single street. We set out to uncover who did it: Russia’s 234th Air Assault Regiment nyti.ms/3joP8y7
This Visual Investigation uses thousands of hours of exclusive videos, phone records, interviews and documents to unmask the Russian unit behind a massacre in Bucha.
My colleagues @YousurAlhlou @MashaFroliak uncovered a chilling pattern in phone records they obtained: Russian soldiers in Bucha routinely used the phones of victims to call home to Russia, often only hours after the killings.
They confirmed that at least 22 paratroopers who made such phone calls are part of the 234th Regiment. We don’t know if these soldiers pulled the trigger, but the digital fingerprints they left place their unit at the location & time of killings.
For more details on the vast trove of evidence @YousurAlhlou @MashaFroliak obtained and their phenomenal reporting check out their Twitter thread that includes more materials

@heytherehaley @dim109 & I found several armored vehicles in the footage w/o vehicle numbers & tactical markings obscured. We matched these up with archival photos & videos of the 234th. @tom_bullock_ put us on the right track for this reporting line
In this video, you can see how the 234th receives some of these armored vehicles at their base in Pskov in June 2020.
tvzvezda.ru/news/20206192214-yXk2i.html
Vehicle markings and other distinguishing features allowed us to track movements throughout Bucha & along Yablunska Street. In one case, I found the same 234th vehicle in six locations in six different cameras on March 4 & 5.
We created a massive Google Earth layer to map out movements of vehicles, troops and commanders. I set up a network link so everyone on the team had access to an updated version in real time.
This reminded me how almost 9 years ago I wrote about how one day we might be able to create a “Marauders map for war criminals” to track perpetrators of atrocities
mediashift.org/2014/02/the-youtube-war-citizen-videos-revolutionize-human-rights-monitoring-in-syria/...
“This kind of digital evidence is a sea change…,” Dr. Matthew Gillett from @Uni_of_Essex told me when asked about the materials we obtained. “If any Ukraine cases end up at an international court such as the ICC, it has to have a significant video component.”
Artyom Gorodilov is the guy in charge of the 234th & ran operations in Bucha. Despite the global outrage over the images from Yablunska Street, Andrey Serdyukov, then the head of Russia’s airborne forces, promoted him
tvzvezda.ru/news/202249630-gJxHd.html
The team has identified 36 Ukrainian victims killed along Yablunska Street. You can read about their final moments here. Via @YousurAlhlou @MashaFroliak @heytherehaley
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/21/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-massacre-victims.html
Very big thank you to @georgewbarros @TheStudyofWar @tom_bullock_ @janes and @C4ADS for helping us with their expertise
Co-produced by @YousurAlhlou @MashaFroliak @heytherehaley @malachybrowne, edited by @dim109 and @NatalieReneau, animated by @ajcardia. Additional reporting by @evanhill @ishaan_jhavs @julianbarnes @msalexkoroleva
Senior Producers: @malachybrowne with @whitney_hurst and @hanaansarhan. Executive Producer: @markscheffler. Translations by @msalexkoroleva, Oksana Nesterenko and Milana Mazaeva
Mentions
See All
Collections
See All