The horrifying images that come from a mass grave in Ukraine 2:49
(CNN) -
The grotesque images emerging from the Kyiv suburb of Bucha are some of the strongest evidence yet of what appear to be war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine: civilians killed in the street, some with the hands tied and shot execution-style, others gunned down seemingly at random.
For anyone who has followed the warlike style of Russian President Vladimir Putin, this is a depressingly familiar pattern.
The Russian Army has a well-documented culture of brutality and disregard for the laws of armed conflict.
“The history of Russia's military interventions, whether in Ukraine or Syria, or its military campaign in Chechnya, is tainted with a blatant disregard for international humanitarian law,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
"The Russian military repeatedly flouted the laws of war by failing to protect civilians and even attacking them directly. Russian forces launched indiscriminate attacks, used prohibited weapons, and at times appeared to deliberately attack civilians and civilian targets - a crime of war".
ANALYSIS |
Images of dead bodies of civilians lying in the streets of Bucha, Ukraine, shock the world
That statement, made less than a month before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has proven sadly prescient.
In the first weeks of the war, the international community reacted with horror when Ukrainian cities came under relentless Russian bombardment.
Protected civilian infrastructure was targeted, just as Russian planes once attacked Syrian schools and hospitals.
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But the scenes played out in places like Bucha suggest a kind of intrinsic violence, reminiscent of Russia's war in Chechnya.
During the second Chechen war, which coincided with Putin's coming to power, allegations of widespread human rights abuses by Russian troops also surfaced.
In 2000, to cite just one known incident, Human Rights Watch researchers documented the summary executions of at least 60 civilians in two suburbs of Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.
Locals unearthed mass graves in Chechnya;
international officials made fact-finding trips to the region and issued statements expressing concern about reports of abuses and extrajudicial killings.
Those allegations did not stop the Russian military from going ahead with its ruthless campaign of pacification.
Russian soldiers in Grozny, Chechnya, on February 5, 2000.
Similar evidence of summary executions abounds in towns like Bucha.
A CNN team visited the basement of a building and saw the bodies of five men, before a Ukrainian team removed them.
An adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko told CNN that the five men had been tortured and executed by Russian soldiers.
CNN has been unable to independently verify Gerashchenko's claims.
But equally worrying is the alleged treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war by Russian forces.
The Ukrainian parliament's human rights ombudsman Liudmyla Denisova said on Monday that Russia's treatment of prisoners of war violates the Geneva Conventions, laying out a theoretical case for potential war crimes trials.
In a Facebook post on Monday, Denisova said the freed Ukrainian soldiers "spoke about the inhumane treatment they were given by the Russian side: they were kept in a field, in a pit, in a garage. Periodically they took one out, beat him with the butts of the rifles, they shot next to his ear, they intimidated him".
CNN has not been able to independently verify Denisova's claims.
Tanya Nedashkovskaya, 57, mourns the death of her husband, who was killed in Bucha.
Igor Zhdanov, a correspondent for the Russian state propaganda outlet RT, published videos on March 22 showing Ukrainian prisoners of war being processed for "leakage" — Zhdanov's word of choice — after they were captured.
The videos show masked Russians searching their captives for tattoos or insignia, which would allegedly show affiliation with nationalist or "neo-Nazi" groups that the Russians have portrayed as their main enemy in Ukraine.
Zhdanov said in his post that Ukrainian prisoners of war were being treated humanely.
But his choice of words was sinister.
During the war in Chechnya, Russian forces notoriously used so-called "filtration camps" to separate civilians from rebel fighters.
Legendary Russian investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya collected testimonies from Chechen civilians detained in filtration centers, where detainees said they were kept in pits and subjected to electric shocks, beatings and ruthless interrogations.
Russian forces have also targeted local Ukrainian mayors for detention, and in at least one case, Ukrainian authorities say, extrajudicial execution.
The horrors of Putin's invasion of Ukraine are increasingly coming to light
"At the moment, 11 local mayors from the Kyiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Donetsk regions are in Russian captivity," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a message posted on social media on Sunday.
She added that the Ukrainian government learned on Saturday that Olga Sukhenko, the mayor of Motyzhyn, a town in the Kyiv region, had died in the custody of Russian forces.
Ivan Fedorov, mayor of the southern city of Melitopol, detained by Russian forces and later released in a prisoner exchange, said Russian forces occupying his city were taking over local businesses, saying the "situation is difficult, because the Russian soldiers have declared themselves authorities but, of course, they don't care about people and their problems, they only care about taking money from businessmen and taking over their businesses."
Long before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military had a reputation for a culture of cruelty.
Russia has a hybrid system of forces made up of contract soldiers and conscripts.
Although the Russian government claims to have made progress in professionalizing its forces, the country's military still has a brutal hazing system known as dedovshchina, a scandalous tradition that encourages veteran recruits to beat, brutalize, or even rape older recruits. youths.
Joe Biden calls Bucha, Ukraine atrocities a 'war crime'
Putin recently announced a spring conscription decree, setting a goal of 134,500 people being called up to the Russian armed forces.
Russia's president originally stated that the conscripts would not participate in what Russia has euphemistically called the "special military operation" in Ukraine.
But the Russian Defense Ministry later acknowledged that the conscripts were fighting in Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces claim to have taken a sizeable number of Russian conscripts prisoner.
Ukrainian investigators are already launching criminal investigations into alleged crimes committed by Russian forces, as more areas are released from Russian control, particularly around Kyiv and the northern city of Chernihiv.
It will be days, or perhaps weeks, before a more complete picture of what happened in Bucha is known.
But if the past is any guide, there is little hope that the Russian perpetrators will be brought to justice.
CNN's Alex Hardie contributed to this report. CNN's Vasco Cotovio contributed reporting from Bucha, Ukraine.
ArmyWar in UkraineRussia invasion of Ukraine