- March 31, 2026
- 10:40 pm
- Ukraine
On March 31, 2026, Ukraine returned to one of the most terrifying points in its recent history — Bucha. For Ukraine, this is not just a date. For the Israeli audience too. Bucha has long gone beyond the Ukrainian narrative and has become an international point of moral testing: is the modern world capable of keeping documented evil in focus when the initial shock passes and fatigue sets in.
In the spring of 2022, Bucha became the place after which it was no longer possible to honestly say that it was only about army battles, front maneuvers, or military interests clashes. The world saw the bodies of civilians on the streets, in basements, in courtyards, in mass graves. Saw traces of torture. Saw not the ‘fog of war,’ but violence against civilians that cannot be explained by chance.
Therefore, the conversation about Bucha in 2026 is not only a conversation about memory. It is a conversation about how exactly the Russian occupation was organized, how many people died, what was documented by dates, who the investigation has already identified, and why all attempts to present Bucha as a ‘controversial topic’ run into not a lack of information, but an unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious.
What happened in Bucha: chronology, numbers, and scale of the crime
The summary data presented in the materials about the Bucha massacre attribute the period of mass crimes to the period from March 3 to April 1, 2022. It is not only about Bucha itself but also about a number of settlements in the Bucha district of the Kyiv region — including Irpin, Hostomel, Motyzhyn, and other places where Russian forces came. The list of murder methods includes shootings, torture, hangings, rapes, and explosions, and the article card indicates the number of dead — 637 people. This is the final summary figure that appeared as the investigation developed and data was clarified.
It is important to understand that there are several figures for Bucha, and they do not contradict each other but relate to different stages of crime documentation. At an early stage, Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk reported a mass grave where 280 people were buried. Separately, there was mention of another 57 bodies in another mass grave. Then, as of April 12, 2022, 403 bodies of civilians killed during the occupation were found in the city. And only later did the summary data show the figure of 637 killed. That is, 403 is not ‘another version,’ but one of the intermediate stages of establishing the scale of the tragedy.
There is another indicator that is especially important for understanding the nature of these killings. According to data published on April 7, 2022, about 90% of civilian casualties in Bucha died as a result of shootings.
This is a key fact because it directly hits the long-standing attempts to present the deaths as a side result of chaotic battles, artillery, or confusion on the line of confrontation. When nine out of ten victims are shootings, it is no longer about ‘combat randomness,’ but about a different logic of violence.
What happened day by day
Russian advanced forces occupied Bucha in early March 2022. The material notes that bodies of the killed began to appear on the streets already on March 11, 2022, and this was later confirmed by satellite images: the location of the bodies in these frames matched what journalists and investigators saw after the Russian troops left. This is an important detail because it helped to destroy one of the most aggressively promoted Russian theses — that the bodies appeared on the streets after the Russian units left.
Separate recorded episodes show what the occupation looked like on the ground. On March 4, 2022, Russian soldiers killed three unarmed civilians who were delivering food to a dog shelter. On March 5, 2022, around 7:15 am, Russian soldiers opened fire on a convoy of cars with two families trying to leave. A man from the second car was killed, and the front car was shot at and set on fire — two children and their mother died. On March 12, 2022, 60-year-old Ilya Navalny, a relative of Alexei Navalny, was killed. CNN obtained drone footage shot on March 12 and 13, showing Russian soldiers near the bodies of killed Ukrainians. And Reuters, as noted in the material, recorded signs of digging a trench for a mass grave near the Church of St. Andrew the First-Called already on March 10, 2022.
By the end of March, during the general retreat of Russian forces from the Kyiv region, Ukrainian troops entered Bucha on April 1, 2022. Already on April 2, 2022, the first videos were published showing what was left after the occupation: bodies on the streets, traces of mass killings, basements, torture sites, testimonies of local residents. It was after this that Bucha became not only a Ukrainian but also a global name.
What exactly was documented
The material is not just about a large number of killed. It lists specific signs of particular cruelty.
Eighteen mutilated bodies of men, women, and children were found in a basement; examination found traces of torture, including cut-off ears and pulled-out teeth. Other footage and testimonies featured civilians with tied hands, bodies with signs of extrajudicial executions by a shot to the back of the head, naked women with signs of violence and attempts to burn bodies. It is separately mentioned that many of the killed were shot during ordinary everyday life: people were riding bicycles, walking down the street, carrying bags, looking for water or food.
This is one of the most difficult but also the most important elements of the entire Bucha story: the victims were not an abstract ‘side effect of war.’ These were civilians killed in a civilian environment.
There are already convictions for war crimes in Bucha for 29 Russian occupiers
A separate important layer of this story is not only the memory of the victims but also the progress of the investigation. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko stated on March 31, 2026, that convictions have already been handed down to 29 Russian occupiers for crimes committed in Bucha. These are those whom Ukrainian law enforcement links to the killings and torture of civilians after the region’s de-occupation.
According to Kravchenko, after the territory was liberated, investigators and prosecutors were able to identify both specific Russian units operating in Bucha and the district, as well as individual servicemen involved in crimes against the civilian population. This is an important clarification: the investigation is not in an abstract plane, but about specific people, episodes, and chains of command.
The overall scale of what has been documented also sounds heavy. In Bucha itself, law enforcement documented almost 900 crimes, and in the Bucha district — more than 11,000.
According to the Prosecutor General, 215 people have been charged, and more than 4,000 investigative actions have already been conducted as part of the investigation. This shows that it is not a one-time campaign for a commemorative date, but a long systematic work where they try to gather evidence for each episode and each participant.
Separately, Kravchenko emphasized that the investigation is moving up the chain of command — from the executor to the organizer. According to him, no matter how many dozens or hundreds of investigative actions are needed, the work will not stop because a separate team is working on it around the clock. This phrase is important in the context of Bucha: the question is no longer just about documenting the horror, but whether it will be possible to bring the case to accountability not only at the level of ordinary executors but also those who gave the orders.
Why Bucha remains a political and moral nerve of the war four years later
Four years after Bucha’s liberation, the pain has not gone away. But the context has changed. In 2022, the shock was almost physical: the world saw what could not be unseen. In 2026, another, no less dangerous problem arises — habituation. Fatigue. The desire to divert the conversation from specific crimes to abstract formulas about negotiations, de-escalation, ‘complex situations,’ and ‘the need to look forward.’
For the Israeli reader, there is a very understandable nerve in this. When violence against civilians begins to be wrapped in the language of context and geopolitics, it is no longer an attempt to understand reality. It is the beginning of its blurring. History knows too well what happens when mass crimes are first recognized, then ‘framed,’ and then gradually pushed to the periphery of public attention.
That is why Bucha still irritates those who try to deny, soften, or repackage the facts. Not because there is little data. On the contrary. There is too much data. Too many photos, names, burials, satellite images, testimonies, journalistic and investigative materials. Bucha became the place where the main Russian myth about the war as supposedly ‘targeted’ and allegedly directed only against military targets collapsed.
Who was involved and what is known to the investigation
The material card lists a long list of Russian units involved: 64th Motorized Rifle Brigade of the Russian Federation, 74th Motorized Rifle Brigade, 5th Tank Brigade, 137th, 331st, and 234th Air Assault Regiments, as well as special forces and Rosgvardiya units. The text separately emphasizes that one of the key units, according to preliminary data, was the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade.
Then the circle of established persons gradually expanded. At one stage, Ukrainian law enforcement announced the identification of 91 occupiers involved in crimes in Bucha. On December 30, 2024, Ukrainian police named the Russian soldier who allegedly gave orders to shoot civilians — Artem Tareev, born in 1995, commander of the 234th Air Assault Regiment. Then, on October 31, 2025, investigators identified another five Russian soldiers involved in the murder of 17 civilians in Bucha. And as of February 2026, as indicated in the material, 211 Russians involved in atrocities in Bucha and the Bucha district had been identified. This is an important point: the investigation did not freeze in 2022 but continued and continues to develop.
The Russian side, as expected, denied the crimes and called the evidence a ‘provocation’ or ‘staging.’
But these statements, as stated directly in the material, were refuted by a number of international investigative and media structures, including Bellingcat, Deutsche Welle, BBC, The Economist, and The New York Times. Later, on December 22, 2022, journalists from The New York Times identified by name the Russian paratroopers involved in the killings of civilians in Bucha. And in September 2025, the British publication The Sunday Times published an investigation naming 13 Russian officers associated with mass killings, based on satellite images, drone videos, radio intercepts, and witness testimonies.
And here, NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency is important not as another platform for retelling the Ukrainian agenda, but as a space where it can be said directly to the Israeli audience: the attempt to soften Bucha is not neutrality. It is not caution. It is already a form of moral evasion from the obvious.
Israel and Bucha: words were spoken, but the line remained cautious — and Netanyahu is still silent
Israel’s reaction to Bucha was uneven from the very beginning. Already on April 3, 2022, Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, called the killings of civilians in Bucha an ‘unjustified war crime’. Two days later, on April 5, 2022, then-Foreign Minister Yair Lapid spoke even more harshly and directly stated that Russian forces committed war crimes against defenseless civilians. This was the first time an Israeli minister of such a level used this formulation in relation to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
But at the same time, a completely different line was also heard in Israel. Then-Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that ‘everyone condemns war crimes,’ but emphasized that there are ‘mutual accusations’ and that Israel ‘must proceed from its own interests.’ It was this cautious, almost evasive position that then provoked a sharp reaction from the Ukrainian side and became part of a broader Israeli debate about how far Jerusalem is willing to go in publicly criticizing Moscow. This context is detailed here: https://nikk.agency/avigdor-liberman-lider/
Against this background, something else is especially noticeable. Throughout the entire time — from April 2022 to the present, including the fourth anniversary of Bucha on March 31, 2026, — there has been no separate public statement from the current Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, specifically about Bucha. And this no longer looks like a random pause. Rather, it is part of a consistent cautious line: individual Israeli diplomats and ministers called Bucha a war crime, but the head of government himself did not make this topic his public position.
What the visit of Zelensky on March 31, 2026, meant
Against this background, the visit of Volodymyr and Olena Zelensky to Bucha on March 31, 2026 had not just a ceremonial meaning. The presidential couple, dressed in black, participated in a memorial ceremony and placed candles at the memorial on the grounds of the Church of St. Andrew the First-Called and All Saints of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The gesture itself was restrained, without unnecessary theatricality, and precisely in this lies its weight: Bucha is not turned into a decoration, it is maintained as a place of crime and memory.
In a joint address, it was said that it was then that the whole world learned about Bucha — about brutally killed Ukrainians on the streets, about tortured people in basements, about those shot on the roads, about adults and children whose bodies were found in graves.
Zelensky reminded that then everyone saw what horror Russia brings and what Ukraine is actually defending against. This formulation is important even now, four years later: Ukraine did not create an ‘information picture,’ but Bucha itself became evidence of the nature of this war.
In a second speech, addressing the participants of the Bucha Summit — 2026, Zelensky said that Bucha survived 33 days of Russian occupation — 33 days of terror, torture, and total evil. He reminded of more than 600 killed Ukrainians and separately noted that footage from Bucha is often compared to the horrific images of World War II. But, he said, there is a fundamental difference, and today it sounds like a reproach not only to Russia but also to part of the world establishment: Nazism was punished for its crimes, and today’s Russia too often faces not only condemnation but also talks about easing pressure.
Then Zelensky expanded the framework and listed other Ukrainian cities and places that this war passed through: Irpin, Borodyanka, Mariupol, Yagodnoye, Avdiivka, Olenivka, Vuhledar, Chasiv Yar, and many others. The meaning of his words was harsh and clear: Bucha did not remain an exception. It became one of the first most vivid episodes of what Russia then repeated in various forms throughout Ukraine.
For the Israeli reader, there is a direct conclusion here.
When the leader of a country that has experienced mass crimes against civilians speaks not only about memory but also about the price of international indecision, it concerns not only Ukraine. It concerns any society that knows the price of terror, ideological violence, and attempts to later present a documented crime as a subject of discussion.
Bucha is not just a pain that does not subside. It is a place where excuses for the world ended. And Zelensky’s visit on March 31, 2026, was needed precisely to remind: the war did not end in Bucha, the threat did not disappear after Bucha, but the memory of Bucha should not be softened, displaced, or rewritten. Because there are points in history that not only record the past. They determine who the living become after they have seen the truth.
