German intelligence intercepted radio exchanges between Russian soldiers who discussed killing civilians outside Kyiv, potentially bolstering evidence that Kremlin forces carried out atrocities, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Thursday.
German officials, who presented the intelligence to lawmakers in Berlin on Wednesday, say the intercepts indicate that the murder of civilians in the town of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital was not an act by rogue forces, but may have been part of a deliberate strategy to foment terror, the magazine said. Russia has said that images of civilian corpses found in Bucha after the Kremlin’s withdrawal were staged.
The U.S. imposed a fresh set of sanctions and the European Union is assembling its own raft of measures after the allegations of killings carried out by Russian forces that global leaders, including President Joe Biden, have called war crimes.
The BND intercepts matched location data with the position of bodies found in Bucha, the magazine reported. In one conversation, a soldier is heard to claim that he shot and killed a cyclist. In another, an individual can be heard saying that bystanders should initially be questioned, then shot.
The German information indicated that mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private Russian military company, may have been involved in the atrocities, Spiegel reported. Eyewitnesses described young soldiers initially arriving in Bucha during the first phase of the invasion, which began Feb. 24, and then replaced by others when attacks on civilians began. Some claimed Chechens were among them, Spiegel said.
German officials were also analyzing recordings that could not be localized, raising fears that atrocities could have been committed elsewhere and there were some indications of chatter out of Mariupol, Spiegel said.
