WORLD

Atrocities in Ukraine war have deep roots in Russian military

Tetiana Petrovna reacts in the garden where Roman Havryliuk, his brother Serhiy Dukhli and an unidentified victim were found in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 4. The seemingly pointless, close-up killings of individuals by Russian troops recall wars in Chechnya, but analysts wonder whether they reflect intent, or only indifference, propaganda and a military culture of violence? | DANIEL BEREHULAK/THE NEW YORK TIMES

By Anton Troianovski
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Apr 18, 2022

In a photograph from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine, a woman stands in the yard of a house, her hand covering her mouth in horror, the bodies of three dead civilians scattered before her. When Aset Chad saw that picture, she started shaking and hurtled 22 years back in time.

In February 2000, she walked into her neighbor’s yard in Chechnya and glimpsed the bodies of three men and a woman who had been shot repeatedly in front of her 8-year-old daughter. Russian soldiers had swept their village and murdered at least 60 people, raped at least six women and plundered the victims’ gold teeth, human rights observers found.

"I am having the most severe flashbacks,” Chad, who now lives in New York, said in a phone interview. "I see exactly what’s going on: I see the same military, the same Russian tactics they use, dehumanizing the people.”