Radio messages proving Russian forces have deliberately murdered civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha have been reportedly intercepted by German intelligence.
The intercepted messages claim to hear Russian soldiers openly discussing shooting civilians making it seem as though the atrocities perpetrated on civilians in Bucha were not random acts but rather a planned attack.
The largest German news website Der Spiegel has reportedly learned that Germany's foreign intelligence service The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) acquired incriminating radio traffic from Russian military personnel discussing the murder of civilians in North Kyiv where Bucha is located.
On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, triggering Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II, with millions of Ukrainians forced to flee their country or stay and risk being killed.
Russia has refuted targeting civilians during the war, including denying massacring hundreds of Ukrainians in Bucha where mass graves were recently found after Russian troops retreated from the town. Numerous victims' bodies, including women and children, had been found with their hands tied up, others showed signs of torture and rape.
The intercepted messages could help prove war crimes have been committed by the Russian army.
Some of the intercepted traffic claims to match the locations of bodies found in Bucha. In one instance, a soldier told another to shoot a cyclist, and the description of the cyclist matches pictures and videos of a dead body lying next to a bike in the town.
Another intercepted conversation claims Russian soldiers are ordered to shoot Ukrainian soldiers.
"First you interrogate soldiers, then you shoot them," the outlet reported.
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According to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, the majority of killed civilians in Bucha had bullet wounds rather than shelling.
"Almost 90 percent of the murdered civilians in Bucha were found to have bullet wounds, not shrapnel ones, – mayor of Bucha. They are not random collateral casualties of war. They were killed deliberately, on purpose," Defence of Ukraine posted on Twitter.
Audio from the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine claims to intercept a conversation between Russian soldiers where they are ordered to kill civilians.
"Two people came out of the forest, civilians," one Russian soldier said.
"Kill them all," another soldier replied. "What are you waiting for you a** f**kers."
The soldier replied there is a whole village of civilians, to which the other soldier said to shoot their cars.
It is not clear where this incident took place or if it had been 'staged' by the Ukraine Government, which Russia has claimed the Ukrainian government has been doing to justify more sanctions against Russia.
This gruesome new insight comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Thursday that the situation in the nearby town of Borodyanka is "significantly more dreadful" than in Bucha, with even more civilian victims.
"What will happen when the world learns the whole truth about what the Russian military did in Mariupol?" Zelensky said.
"There, on almost every street, is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the withdrawal of Russian troops."
