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Body bags in a cemetery in Bucha (photo from April 5)
Photo: Felipe Dana / dpa
The US broadcaster CNN has released video footage that is said to show Russian soldiers and military vehicles near the bodies of civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha for the first time.
According to this, the Kremlin troops were already moving among the dead in March.
The corpses were only made public weeks later after the Ukrainian army recaptured them.
The videos recorded by a drone on March 12 and 13 were located and checked for authenticity, the broadcaster reported on Wednesday night.
The broadcaster said the source would not be named due to security concerns.
Russia has repeatedly denied responsibility for atrocities in Bucha.
After the withdrawal of Russian troops, images of killed Ukrainian civilians in the suburbs of the capital Kyiv caused horror around the world.
A total of more than 400 bodies were found in Bucha, some with their hands tied behind their backs.
Ukraine speaks of a massacre of civilians and accuses Russia of war crimes.
"The Russian army has nothing to do with it," Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin claimed in a conversation with UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
After the withdrawal, Putin honored soldiers who were deployed in Bucha.
The footage is "the first piece of evidence from Bucha showing Russian vehicles and troops operating on the road where Ukrainian forces found the bodies as they retook the city on April 1," CNN wrote.
A video from March 13 showed a Russian military vehicle at an intersection near three objects.
These had already been identified as corpses on other published satellite images and video recordings.
Russian army apparently used tiny metal dart ammunition
Another drone video from the same day showed another Russian military vehicle driving up a road in the direction of the bodies.
In a March 12 video, several Russian soldiers gathered around a military vehicle parked in front of a house near the bodies.
During autopsies on the numerous bodies from Butscha, it was recently discovered that many of the victims were apparently killed by tiny metal arrows from grenades.
These were fired from so-called Russian »flechette artillery« (read more here).
The tiny projectiles cause serious injuries to people.
fek/dpa
