By Adam Aydin and AFP | 2025-04-16

PRAGUE -- The Ukrainian town of Bucha became a symbol of wartime atrocity after Russian forces withdrew in 2022, leaving behind mass graves and the bodies of hundreds of civilians -- some with their hands bound, others shot at close range.

So far, Russian courts have sentenced only journalists and soldiers in connection with spreading so-called "fake news" about the massacre -- letting the perpetrators of the crimes go unpunished.

Ukrainian authorities have opened more than 180,000 war crime investigations since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

At a March 31 ceremony marking the third anniversary of Bucha's liberation, he expressed hope that the International Criminal Court would bring the highest-level criminals to justice.

'Overwhelming' evidence

A massacre that Ukraine condemned as a war crime left 561 civilians, including 12 children, dead in Bucha during the Russian occupation of the city in Kyiv province from February 27 to March 31, 2022.

The revelation of mass killings drew condemnation from the international community and galvanized international support for Ukraine.

The European Union (EU)'s top diplomat on April 1 confirmed there is "overwhelming" evidence of Russian war crimes in Bucha.

"Impunity for war crimes is frankly impossible, so long as we put the work in," Kaja Kallas told EU lawmakers.

"In Bucha, the evidence is overwhelming," she said. "From photos to phone records and decoded call signs used by commanders on Russian radio channels."

"There is no denying it -- we know exactly who the perpetrators are."

The EU is supporting the Ukrainian prosecutor general's office and is strengthening its capacity to investigate international crimes, including through a civilian EU advisory mission, she said.

And she said that work was advancing on establishing a special tribunal to hold Russia accountable over its invasion.

False justice

But Moscow has denied responsibility, accusing Ukraine of staging incidents, and in Russia, justice has taken a darker turn.

Also on March 31, a court in Moscow sentenced journalists Ekaterina Fomina and Roman Anin in absentia to eight and a half years in prison for investigating the Bucha massacre, convicting them of spreading "fake news" about the Russian army.

The charges stemmed from an iStories investigative report documenting Russian military personnel phoning their homes on the day of the mass shooting of Bucha civilians.

The journalistic investigation appeared in June 2022 both as an article and as a YouTube video.

Authorities initiated the case against Fomina and Anin, the iStories editor-in-chief, in January 2024. Last June the court arrested them in absentia.

Both live in exile.

The court took only four hearings to hand down the sentence, said Fomina, author of the report.

The court ignored her written statements describing the progress of the investigation as well as the defense's attempts to summon witnesses.

Before the sentencing, the judge heard only the prosecution witnesses -- two linguists from the Russian Investigative Committee.

"The sentence was probably written before the trial began," Fomina told Kontur. "Basically, we were unable to influence the course of the case in any way."

In her view, handing down the sentence "promptly" three years after the events in Bucha is unlikely to be a simple coincidence.

"This is quite typical of the Russian authorities -- to time the sentence to coincide with the anniversary of the massacre in Bucha, so that if someone wants to learn about these events and google them online, he [or she] will find results saying it's fake news," said Fomina.

Pressuring independent journalism

In her statement to the court, Fomina emphasized that her investigation does not claim that Russian troops killed civilians in Bucha but convincingly asserts that Russians were in the city at the time of the mass shootings.

She found a Bucha resident's stolen cell phone that Russian paratroopers used to called relatives. She identified the soldiers and contacted the relatives.

Fomina sees the court's sentence as an attempt to pressure independent journalism. She plans to appeal the sentence despite the extremely small chances of achieving justice in contemporary Russian realities.

"I understand what country we are dealing with," she said. "But to deprive myself of the right to defend and stand up for myself would be wrong."

"I believe that the court should investigate the service members' atrocities, not my publication that investigated these military crimes," said Fomina.

Now a journalist for the TV channel Dozhd, Fomina has authored other investigative reports on Russian troops' crimes in Ukraine.

One article was based on an interview with Daniil Frolkin, a member of the 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade, who confessed to killing a civilian in Andriivka village, Kyiv province, in the spring of 2022.

Frolkin, who stayed in Russia, was prosecuted by authorities who did not want Russian soldiers talking about war crimes they had committed.

In March 2023, a military court in Khabarovsk sentenced him to five and a half years of probation. The court said he had circulated "fake news."

For the time being, he remains free.