Death, Incorporated

How Putin's mercenary army known as the Wagner Group does the Kremlin's dirtiest work in Ukraine and in conflict zones around the world.

- By Samuel M. Katz

After a week of heavy fighting against Ukrainian forces in and around Bucha, the Russian military captured the strategic town on kirts capital Kyiv on March 4, 2022. The next day, another cadre of uniformed invaders arrived, older than the typical teenage Russian conscripts, and the noncombat killings began in earnest. It was obvious to besieged locals that these were not regular soldiers. They appeared to act autonomously, and more viciously.

At first, the bloodshed was indiscriminate. A middle-aged man riding his bicycle was shot in the back for sport, a woman returning from the grocery was cut down by a burst of automatic fire. Unarmed residents were robbed at checkpoints and then murdered.

Gunfire was heard at all hours, as were the screams. Bodies were left where they fell as warnings. Soon, the carnage grew even more sadistic, and systematic. Survivors recall how these "soldiers" raided apartment blocks to round up males under 50 years of age, and then bound and executed them. Women were raped and tortured as the armed men laughed and drank. Some corpses were set on fire. Bucha residents, at great peril to themselves, dug hasty graves for other victims, their friends and neighbors, when the Russians weren't watching.

When Ukrainian forces liberated Bucha on April 1, they entered a ghost town littered with rubble and smoldering vehicles. The dead were everywhere.

Bodies were strewn for half a mile along Yablosnka Street in the southern part of town. By conservative estimates, more than 400 men, women and children had been murdered.