Satellite images show civilian deaths in Ukraine's Bucha street

Overview of the site before excavations near the Church of Saint Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in Bucha, Ukraine, on February 28.

Since Russian troops withdrew from towns and villages around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have been showing journalists corpses of what they say are civilians killed by Russian forces, destroyed houses and burnt-out cars.

The West says the dead civilians are evidence of war crimes. 

The West has vowed to impose yet more sanctions on Russia after the discovery of so many dead civilians, some shot in the head, after Russia's withdrawal from areas around Kyiv.

A view of Yablonska Street in Bucha, Ukraine on March 18, 2022.

Satellite photographs released on Monday appear to rebut Russian assertions that dead bodies in civilian clothing found in Bucha had appeared there after Russian forces retreated from the devastated Ukrainian town.

Yablonska Street in Bucha, Ukraine, on March 31, 2022. 

Maxar Technologies provided nine images taken of Bucha on March 18, 19 and 31.

At least four of the images appear to show bodies on one of the town's roads, Yablonska Street. The city was occupied by Russian forces until about March 30.

Horrific images of corpses lying in the streets, some with their hands bound behind them, have drawn international condemnation of Russia.

Moscow has denied responsibility and suggested the images are fake or that the deaths occurred after Russian forces pulled out of the area.

But newly released satellite photographs taken by Maxar Technologies in mid-March, before the Russian withdrawal, showed what appeared to be bodies in some of the same places they were later found by Ukrainian troops and seen by journalists. 

On Monday, wearing body armour and visibly distressed, Zelensky spent half an hour in Bucha, where he blamed Russian troops for the killings.

"These are war crimes and it will be recognised by the world as genocide," he said.

Later in his nightly address, he said "the sanctions response to Russia's massacre of civilians must finally be powerful". 

President Zelensky at Bucha

One of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin's closest allies said claimed that Russian forces executed civilians in Bucha were fake products of Ukrainian and Western propaganda aimed at discrediting Russia.

"These are fakes that matured in the cynical imagination of Ukrainian propaganda," Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council, said.

"They were concocted for vast amounts of money," Medvedev said.

Bucha's deputy mayor, Taras Shapravskyi, said 50 of the dead residents, found after Russian forces withdrew from the city were the victims of extra-judicial killings carried out by Russian troops, and the officials have accused Moscow of war crimes.

Russia's defence ministry said in a statement that all photographs and videos published by the Ukrainian authorities alleging 'crimes' by Russian troops in Bucha were a "provocation," and no resident of Bucha suffered violence at the hands of Russian troops.

Meanwhile, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine had no option but to negotiate with Russia to end fighting but that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin might not personally hold talks.

"All of us, including myself, will perceive even the possibility of negotiations as a challenge," Zelensky said in an interview with Ukrainian journalists broadcast on national television.

"The challenge is internal, first of all, one's own, human challenge. Then, when you pull yourself together, and you have to do it, I think that we have no other choice."

He said the events in Bucha were unforgivable but Ukraine and Russia should take the difficult option of pursuing talks, and signalled that Moscow should recognise what its troops were alleged to have done.

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