For three days in March 2022, Yablunska Street in the city of Bucha became synonymous with the brutality of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now, more than three years later, a new investigation by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service reveals how Russian forces carried out systematic and deliberate killings of civilians.
Using surveillance video, drone footage, and military records, RFE/RL has pieced together a complete picture of the bloodiest days on Yablunska Street and identified some of the officers responsible.
"The idea they would just intentionally kill people like that was unfathomable," said Bucha resident Lyudmyla Kizilova.
Hiding In The Cellar
She had taken shelter with her 69-year-old husband, Valeriy Kizilov, in the basement of their home near Yablunska Street when Russian troops began their occupation of the city.
"There were lots of shots," Kizilova recalled. "All day, all the time, there was a lot of gunfire."
When the couple thought the fighting had subsided, Kizilov left the cellar to see if his house had been damaged. Drone footage obtained by RFE/FL shows him later lying dead from gunshot wounds in his own yard.
A group of Russian soldiers stood nearby. They were later identified as members of the 234th Pskov Regiment.
One was pointing a gun toward the cellar where Kizilov's wife was still hiding.
In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Bucha became a key point in their efforts to take Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.
After a failed attempt to take the town, Russian troops returned on March 3, launching a second assault and quickly capturing Yablunska Street -- a strategic corridor leading to Irpin and Kyiv.
What followed was not a firefight, but an atrocity.
Family Attacked While Fleeing
Several residents of Bucha attempted to flee the city.
Ivanna Hrabovlyak was in a car with her father Mykhaylo, his partner Yulia, and Yulia’s daughter Sasha. As they drove down Yablunska Street, their vehicle was riddled with gunfire.
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The car crashed and filled with smoke. Mykhaylo, unconscious, never released the accelerator. Surveillance footage captured Ivanna fleeing the wreck, with Sasha -- wounded in the arm -- stumbling behind her.
“I hear Sasha screaming," she recalls. "I realize something is wrong with her arm. She couldn’t lift it.”
They eventually found shelter in a basement. Sasha’s arm was too badly damaged to save and she now wears a prosthesis.
Ivanna’s father, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, died in the car. “To me, he was like a superhero,” she said. “It just didn’t seem possible.”
Tracing The Russian Soldiers
Through military records left behind in Bucha and cross-referenced with social media profiles, RFE/RL identified several members of the 234th Pskov Regiment involved in the killings.
Among them was 25-year-old Sergeant Vladimir Borzunov. When RFE/RL contacted him by phone, he showed no remorse.
“Do I care?” he said. “I don’t care.”
Another officer, Lieutenant Artyom Tareyev, led the reconnaissance unit suspected in Valeriy Kizilov’s death. Higher-ranking commanders were also linked to civilian executions via call signs recorded in radio chatter.
By the end of March 2022, Russian forces had retreated from Bucha, and images began to emerge revealing the shocking scale of civilian deaths.
Russian President Vladimir Putin flatly denied his forces' involvement and suggested that evidence of the massacre was staged.
But the accounts of survivors and the verified images from Yablunska Street tell a very different story.
Ukrainian courts have charged Russian officers in absentia, while Kyiv has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate the torture and killings of civilians in Bucha.
