SBU suspects 2 Russian generals of bombing residential houses in Kyiv Oblast town

Locals pass by the remains of an apartment building in the town of Borodyanka in Kyiv Oblast on April 6, 2022. The building was hit by a Russian bomb in early March. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) charged two Russian generals who commanded air strikes on high-rise buildings in the town of Borodianka in Kyiv Oblast during the fighting in 2022, the SBU reported on March 4.

Borodianka, once a town of 12,000 people 40 kilometers northwest of Kyiv, has suffered some of the worst destruction seen by any place in the all-out war against Ukraine. Its scale has been revealed along with mass killings in other capital’s suburbs after Russian troops retreated from Kyiv Oblast in the spring of 2022.

The SBU has found evidence that Alexander Chayko, the commander of the Eastern Military District of the Russian Armed Forces, gave a direct order to fire on apartment buildings in a settlement downtown.

Vladimir Kravchenko, the commander of the 11th Army of the Air Force and Air Defense of the Russian Armed Forces, subsequently dropped 500-kilogram high explosive bombs on residential buildings full of civilians using Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets, according to the SBU.

“As a result of the air attack, Russia destroyed six apartment buildings, killing more than 30 local residents, including a young girl,” the report said.

Some of the Borodyanka residents are still considered missing.

Ukrainian law enforcement officers managed to identify 91 Russian soldiers in 2022 who committed war crimes on the territory of the Bucha community in Kyiv Oblast, where more than 9,000 war crimes have been reportedly documented, the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

As of late 2023, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin said that Ukraine had collected evidence of 109,000 Russian war crimes in Ukraine.