Occupiers discuss killing people in Bucha over the radio – German intelligence

Roman Petrenko — Thursday, 7 April 2022, 13:00

The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has intercepted Russian military radio communications in which the occupiers discuss the mass murder of civilians in Bucha.

Source: Der Spiegel, citing BND information, DW

Details: Specifically, the intelligence service has radio messages whose content is consistent with the location of the bodies of murdered civilians along the main street of Bucha. In one of them, a soldier stated that he and his comrades had shot someone on a bicycle.

In another conversation, a man says that Ukrainian soldiers are being first interrogated and then shot.

In addition, it can be concluded from these materials that Wagner Group fighters played a decisive role in the atrocities in Bucha. It is stated further on that they demonstrated a particular degree of brutality during their participation in the war in Syria.

The conversations intercepted by the BND are evidence that the mass killings in Bucha were neither random acts nor the actions of individual soldiers who had lost control, according to Der Spiegel.

These materials are far more likely to indicate that the killing of civilians has become part of the Russian military’s normal modus operandi, and possibly also part of their strategy of spreading fear and horror among the civilian population and crushing resistance. Der Spiegel notes that in the intercepted conversations, soldiers swap information about atrocities as if they were everyday occurrences.

It is noted that German intelligence has reported this to the German Parliament.