‘They made him kneel and shot him in the head’: the savage occupation of Bucha

Natasha Alexandrova was at home when three Russian soldiers banged on her front gate. It was 4 March. Vladimir Putin's army had captured the city of Bucha, 18.5 miles (30km) north-west of Kyiv, after ferocious fighting. One unit parked at the bottom of Alexandrova's street, Ivan Franko, next to a pine forest and a train track.

The soldiers went from house to house. Alexandrova lived at No 10, together with her 26-year-old nephew, Volodymyr Cherednichenko, and his mother, Nadezhda. "They wanted to know who was living there. They demanded to see our documents and our mobile phones," she said. "They didn't beat us. But they had guns."

Alexandrova hid her phone and gave away a spare. Her nephew handed over his real mobile. It contained photos he had taken of a Russian military column, which Ukrainian forces had wiped out the previous week. The ambush took place in Bucha's railway street. He had sent the images to a friend. "You are coming with us," the soldiers told him.

They escorted her nephew, dressed in a T-shirt and slippers, to No 6, a yellow-painted cottage. Alexandrova said she peered over the picket fence, half up a tree, and eavesdropped on the conversation. "He was crying and sobbing. They'd done something bad to his hand. He was cradling it. He told them repeatedly: 'I don't know any fascists.'"

Later the soldiers shoved Cherednichenko into their armoured personnel carrier, which was parked in the property's apple orchard. His mother brought him a warm coat and shoes. "They told us they were taking him into town for further interrogation and would bring him back after three days," Alexandrova said. "Nadezhda begged them. She pleaded: 'Return my son to me.'"

For three weeks there was no news. Alexandrova talked to one of the Russians, who told her her nephew had been taken to a "non-active zone" in Belarus. "The soldier was 18. I asked him why he had come to Ukraine? He replied: 'Money.' Another said he was missing home, hadn't eaten pelmeni [dumplings] for two weeks, and had been given rations for three days."

Cherednichenko's mother continued to believe he was alive.

On 29 March, Russian forces withdrew from the Kyiv region, in a staggering setback for Moscow's plan to conquer Ukraine. It seemed Putin had reckoned on a quick victory that would remove President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his pro-western government. Instead, his forces got bogged down and sustained massive casualties.

Given an order to retreat, the troops rolled chaotically out of Ivan Franko Street and headed north, back towards the Belarusian border. They left behind smashed-up cars adorned with the letter V, a military symbol, some of them flattened by tanks after drunken joyrides. And a lot of bodies. One was found in a dank garden cellar in the neighbouring street, at the bottom of a brick staircase. It was a young man: Cherednichenko.

"They made him kneel and shot him in the side of the head, through the ear," Alexandrova said. "He was wearing the same coat his mother gave him." In the cellar on Sunday was the bloodstained mattress her nephew had lain on in his final hours, captive and terrified. His was a cold, pitiless killing. There was a pink cuddly toy and the smell of death.

Across Bucha, and the once pleasant suburbs of Hostomel and Irpin, similar crimes were committed during Russia's savage and dark occupation. Residents say the soldiers confiscated mobile phones, demanded car keys and took people away. Some were shot in basements, hands bound. Others were killed inside their homes, or as they drove or cycled along the road.

About a dozen people were murdered on Ivan Franko Street. They included brothers Viktor, 64, and Yuri, 62, who were left lying in a ditch next to the railway line. Sergei Gavrilyuk, a security guard, his brother-in-law Roman and an unknown person were also among the dead. "We couldn't identify him. Half his face was blown off," Alexandrova said of the third victim.

She buried her nephew in her back garden. The grave was small. Spring daffodils grew nearby. Last week, investigators dug up the body, to the barking of Alexandrova's dogs. The family was able to hold a funeral service with Russian prayers. Other relatives were less fortunate. A pile of six charred bodies were found at the beginning of Ivan Franko. A older man lay in nearby Rydzanych Street for several weeks.

Sitting in the kitchen of her neighbour at No 5A, Alexandrova talked about the horrors she had witnessed. After the Ukrainians launched an attack, a Russian soldier accused her of passing on information to the enemy, and threatened her with a grenade. She fetched water from a well with a bucket in one hand and a white flag in the other.

Cherednichenko's father fought with the Ukrainian army in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and started a conflict in Donbas, she said. He died last year. "Volodymyr wanted to be like his dad, to defend his country. We told him it was dangerous and to think of his mother. He was an electrician, and never a soldier," she said.

Over the weekend, Ukrainian rescuers sifted through the ruined street for mines and further human remains. The house where the Gavrilyuks had once lived was now a phantasmagoric mess. A shell had destroyed a Russian armoured vehicle and flung a sleeping bag and a pair of trousers into a tree. There were unexploded mortars, an empty whisky bottle and a white DAF lorry cab, which had been used by the Russians as a bench and checkpoint.

The soldiers had looted everything: underwear, socks, gold, cash, laptops and drinks cabinets, residents said. The invaders were taken aback by the level of prosperity in Ukraine, the family added. The soldiers began stealing as soon as they arrived in Bucha, a popular weekend destination for Kyiv's affluent classes. "The first stolen vehicle I saw with a V on it was a Tesla," Alexandrova said. "They would steal cars and sleep in them."

Over in Railway Street, emergency workers were towing away mangled infantry vehicles one by one. A blue and white striped shirt, used by airborne troops, had been hung on a gun turret, as if awaiting its owner's return. The Russian vehicles - about 30 of them - pointed mazily in different directions. It signified a panicked retreat.

This scene of destruction cost Cherednichenko his life. Several locals wandered around on Sunday taking photos. One, Viktor, said he had talked to the Russians during the first day of their occupation of Bucha. "They told me they had orders to take Kyiv and to capture Zelenskiy," he said, adding that two of them had told him they came from the Siberian republic of Buryatia, 4,350 miles away.

Viktor put a few souvenirs from the battle into a bucket: a box used for machine gun ammunition and a chunk of tread. "They are going to the Bucha museum. It's so our children won't forget," he said. Did he feel any sympathy for the Russian soldiers, some of whom perished? "No. They lived in our houses, put snipers on our streets, invaded our country. If we only had a catapult, we would still fight them."