Meduza has obtained new files containing high-quality drone footage of the southern districts of Bucha, a town on the outskirts of Kyiv that was recently freed from Russian occupation. According to the file metadata, these videos were recorded over the course of several days, from March 23–30, 2022. Like the satellite images recently published by The New York Times, the videos Meduza is publishing here are important pieces of evidence showing that the horrific civilian killings in Bucha took place before Russian troops retreated from the town.

In the videos obtained by Meduza, you can see the bodies of dead civilians lying on Bucha’s Yablonska Street, as well as on several neighboring roads. Using geolocation techniques, we determined exactly where the bodies lay. Their locations completely coincided with the locations of the corpses seen in photos and videos taken by Ukrainian police and journalists in Bucha on April 1–2, 2022 — after Russian troops had left the town. It’s important to note that in the footage taken from above, all of the dead are lying not only in the exact same places, but also in the same poses seen in the footage taken from the ground.

In several of the videos, you can see (at a distance of several dozen or several hundred meters) military vehicles that resemble those used by Russian airborne units (probably BMDs or BTR-Ds). In one of the videos, you can see people standing near one of these combat vehicles. At this point, the bodies of the dead were still lying several dozen meters away from these soldiers.