Russian soldiers used the phones of Bucha victims to call home, revealing the unit that killed dozens: NYT

The New York Times reported that a group of Russian soldiers responsible for dozens of killings in the Ukrainian town of Bucha used their victims' phones to call home.

Russian soldiers brutally occupied the town of Bucha, located outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, in the month of March, leaving a road of death in their wake.

The bodies of several people were found with their hands tied behind their backs. Many people stayed in the streets for a long time.

The International Criminal Court is looking into possible war crimes in Ukraine, but residents will need a lot of evidence to prove their case.

Matthew Gillet, a senior lecturer at the University of Essex with past experience working on international criminal courts, told The Times that if anyUkraine cases end up at an international court, it has to have a significant video component.

In order to find out who was responsible for the massacre, the newspaper spent eight months interviewing people in the town.

According to The Times, the killings in Bucha were carried out by Russian soldiers from the 234th air assault battalion.

The newspaper used a lot of evidence, including phone records, call signs from commanders on Russian radio channels, uniform badges, and packing slips, to zero in on the 234th air assault unit.

The outlet obtained a database of all calls and messages from the town in the month of March after residents said Russian soldiers took their phones during interrogations. Russian soldiers would often use their victims' phones to call home to Russia, even after the phone's owner had been killed, according to reporters.

The Times used the phone numbers that Russian soldiers had dialled out of Bucha to cross-reference those soldiers' family members' suspected social media profiles, which led to the identification of two dozen members of the regiment, two of whom actually confirmed to the outlet that they were paratroopers who

Horrifying photos of mass graves and videos of street executions out of Bucha shocked the world earlier this year. According to The Times, residents who survived now call Yablunska Street the "road of death" to honor the 400 people who died during the occupation.

There are tens of thousands of war crimes being investigated in Ukranian. Russia has come under fire for its actions in the war so far. President Joe Biden referred to Putin as a war criminal.

There is a slim chance that Putin would ever be tried for war crimes because of the limitations of the international justice system.

The jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court is not recognized by Russia. The defendants can't be tried in absentia.

The US and Russia are not members of the International Criminal Court. According to Human Rights Watch, the obligation to cooperate with the court has been accepted by Ukraine.

There are a lot of questions regarding accountability over the thousands of alleged war crimes in Ukranian.

In May of this year, a Russian soldier was sentenced to life in prison in the first war crimes trial related to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The soldier was sentenced to 15 years in a Ukrainian court.