Reuters has an extensive investigation this morning looking at the Russian military units that were present during the occupation of Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where Russian forces carried out mass killings in March before Ukrainian troops forced them to retreat.
One of the other groups present, according to the outlet’s analysis of documents found in Bucha, was an elite Russian force commanded by a top official:
Servicemen from Russia’s Vityaz security force were among the occupying troops, an identity document found at the scene showed. Vityaz, whose presence in Bucha is revealed here for the first time, is under the command of the National Guard, Rosgvardiya. Its boss, Viktor Zolotov, who didn’t comment for this article, is a former Putin bodyguard and reports directly to the Russian president.
This reporting is significant because it indicates that a unit overseen by a top Russian official was present at Bucha, where over 900 bodies have been found, the vast majority of which featured gunshot wounds consistent with execution-style killings.
Zolotov is a member of Russia’s Security Council, which held a highly staged debate on the eve of the invasion. He and other top Russian officials were purportedly deliberating whether Russian should move to recognize Russia-backed enclaves in the Donbas region.
Putin, Zolotov, and others used that gathering to make Russia’s case for war, citing a number of alleged Ukrainian provocations, including a genocide of ethnic Russians in the Donbas. For his part, Zolotov, the final official to speak, claimed that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said his country would seek nuclear weapons, implying that the U.S. supported such a plan.
“Recognizing these republics is certainly a must. I would like to say that we should go even further to defend our country,” he said, concluding his comments.
Reuters outlined the evidence detailing the Vityaz cell’s presence at Bucha, citing an identification card found at the Russian force’s makeshift military headquarters in the town:
The card certified that its holder had completed a course in using telecoms equipment. It was issued on Dec. 7, 2021 to a Corporal Konstantin Vladimirovich Korshunov, and identified him as a member of military unit No. 3179, which belongs to Russia’s Vityaz security force. Vityaz is part of the National Guard, Rosgvardiya, that reports to Putin’s former bodyguard Zolotov. He was put on a U.S. sanctions list in March for his force’s alleged role in suppressing dissent in occupied areas of Ukraine and cracking down on Russians who oppose the war. Russia has cast such western sanctions as a hostile act.
By cross-referencing details on the identification card with social media profiles and publicly available databases, Reuters established that Korshunov is a 23-year-old originally from Penza, 625 km south-east of Moscow. Two people from Penza who know Korshunov confirmed that he is in active service in Rosgvardiya, and one of them said he serves in unit No. 3179, part of Vityaz. They said he was away on a work trip. Reuters contacted Korshunov, but he didn’t respond.
Vityaz is elite and highly-trained. It played a role in a major episode of Putin’s early presidency: When Chechen rebels took the audience hostage at Moscow’s Nord Ost theatre in 2002, Vityaz was sent in to help end the siege. More than 100 of the 700 people inside the theatre died, many in part from the effect of gas that Russian security forces pumped into the building to incapacitate the hostage takers, an official Russian investigation concluded.
Reuters reported that the local prosecutor’s office in Bucha said that Rosgvardiya personnel were also part of the occupying force.
The outlet also interviewed Bucha residents who said that a commander who had arrived in the middle of the month took great pains to conceal his identity. That individual turned his face away from Bucha residents and told his guards to threaten to kill anyone who saw it.