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Germany intercepted conversations of Russian soldiers discussing Bucha killings, contradicting Kremlin claims of a hoax, report says
Ukrainian servicemen walk on a destroyed street on April 4, 2022 in Bucha, Ukraine.
Ukrainian servicemen walk on a destroyed street in Bucha.Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images
  • Russian troops talked about killing people over the radio.

  • German intelligence obtained the radio transmissions.

  • The atrocities found in the Ukrainian town were not staged as claimed by the Russians.

The killings of civilians in the town of Bucha were discussed in radio transmissions by Russian soldiers, according to a report.

The radio transmissions were presented to parliament on Wednesday, according to the report.

A Russian soldier described how he shot someone off their bicycle in one of the recordings.

It's not clear when the radio messages were sent or where the Russian troops were.

After Russian forces left the town, there was footage and images of people killed on the street.

On Tuesday, The New York Times published independently verified aerial footage that shows a Russian armored vehicle shooting at a civilian on a bicycle. It is not clear if the person in the video was the same person as the one in the radio messages.

According to the audio recordings, the Russian mercenary military, theWagner Group, played a key role in the atrocities in Bucha.

The US and European Union have linked Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the organization.

The group is accused of committing war crimes and human-rights abuses in Syria in 2015, as well as being tied to Russian rebels in the pro-Kremlin Donbas region.

Western intelligence said last month that as many as 1,000 of the group's mercenaries were being deployed to eastern Ukraine.

Russia denied responsibility for the atrocities in Bucha, claiming that there was no evidence that the footage was staged or manipulated.

On Tuesday, the Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti ran an opinion column that said the killings were a ploy by Western nations to impose more sanctions on Russia.

Russia claimed that the killings were a Ukrainian hoax.

The original article is on Business Insider.