Sunday Times reveals identity of 13 commanders responsible for Bucha war crimes

An investigation by The Sunday Times has revealed the identity of the 13 Russian commanders whose troops committed war crimes against Ukrainian civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, in early 2022.

The investigation, which was conducted by independent lawyers and investigators using open-source intelligence sources and was corroborated by The Sunday Times, is the first to present evidence against all of the high-ranking Russian soldiers believed to be associated with the Bucha massacre.

More than 80 soldiers under the combined command of the 13 officers have already been identified, though many more believed to have taken part in the Bucha atrocities remain unknown.

The commanders identified by The Sunday Times, several of whom had already been named by other outlets,, include:

● Colonel General Alexander Chayko — commander of Russia’s Eastern Military District and the most senior Russian officer on the ground in Ukraine at the outset of the full-scale invasion.

● Major General Sergey Chubarykin — head of the elite 76th Guards Air Assault Division, who directly commanded soldiers accused of carrying out the majority of the war crimes in Bucha, including executions, torture and looting.

● Colonel Azatbek Omurbekov — from the 64th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade, nicknamed the “Butcher of Bucha,” allegedly had a hand in “gross violations of human rights” including “direct responsibility in killings, rape and torture,” according to the US State Department..

● Major General Vladimir Seliverstov — stationed at the command post on Bucha’s Yablunska Street, which has been described as the “nerve centre” of the Russian violence.

● Colonel Sergey Karasev — accused of assaulting a woman, knocking out her teeth with his gun, and of shooting a civilian in the head.

In early 2022, Russian forces occupied the town of Bucha, located some 30 kilometres northwest of Kyiv, for 29 days, during which time they are accused of committing a series of war crimes, including extrajudicial executions, rape, torture and looting.

The bodies of more than 500 civilians have been recovered from Bucha since the town was recaptured by Ukrainian forces at the end of March 2022, including over 100 bodies buried in a mass grave outside a local Orthodox Christian church.

Human rights watchdogs have described the actions of Russian soldiers at Bucha as ethnic cleansing and a crime against humanity. Moscow has alternately claimed that the attack was committed by British special forces and accused Kyiv of provocatively “staging” a war crime in order to smear the Russian Army’s reputation.