By Jack Goodman, Kayleen Devlin, Maria Korenyuk & Joshua Cheetham
BBC News
Image source, Getty Images
There have been urgent calls for investigations into allegations of war crimes in previously Russian-held areas of Ukraine after shocking footage of murdered civilians.
But there are wider questions over whether widespread Russian attacks on civilian targets amount to war crimes.
We’ve been looking at a series of attacks in one city – Chernihiv – to see whether they are consistent with Russian tactics across Ukraine and reveal something of their strategy.
1: Direct targeting of civilians
“They were shooting at us with everything they had,” says Diana, 20. Within minutes of encountering the Russian tank, half her family would be dead.
Diana, her mother Irina, her partner Sasha and his little brother Maxim were fleeing Chernihiv on 9 March after weeks of shelling. They had one simple aim – to reach safety in the west of the country, where relatives were waiting for them.
But within minutes of leaving the city heading south they were plunged into danger.
As their Volkswagen Golf passed the village of Kolychivka, Sasha saw Russian tanks ahead. One fired at them immediately. He put his foot down, hoping to accelerate through the danger zone – and then the car stalled.
Image source, Diana
Sasha, Diana and Maxim, and Diana with her mother Irina
The firing continued, and Sasha shouted for them get out – but 15-year-old Maxim had already been hit. There was a hole in his chest and blood coming from his mouth.
Diana, Sasha and Irina crawled into bushes – but soldiers were approaching, shouting to each other, asking where the family were hiding. Bullets cracked towards them.
Diana’s foot was seriously injured. Sasha tried to bandage it, but then as he turned to help Irina, the horror worsened.
“Irina opened her jacket and we realised that there was nothing to bandage,” Diana told BBC News. “A part of her abdomen and intestines had been shot through.”
They heard more shooting and Diana turned to Sasha believing these were their final minutes.
“We had time to say that we loved each other,” she said. “I asked Sasha, ‘Are we going to die here?’ He said, ‘Probably’.
“My mum crawled with us a little more. I kept turning and saying, ‘Mum, crawl, please, please’. She said, ‘Yes, yes’. And then she [lay] down on the ground. She died there.”
Diana kept crawling, following Sasha as he broke a path for her through the thicket. They went past a burning field and through the forest.
Diana and Sasha survived and she made it to a hospital. She has lost four toes from her left foot.
Diana has no doubt the attackers were Russian because of their accents, uniforms and the Z symbol daubed on one of the tanks.
The BBC’s verification team has found no evidence of any legitimate military targets near the site of the attack.
Attacks on civilians in cars elsewhere
- Regional authorities say at least 25 civilians, including six children, have been killed in attacks on cars trying to flee Chernihiv, or attacked in public places, since the start of the conflict
- Footage filmed by a Ukrainian drone in the Kyiv region showed the killing of a man who had raised his arms in the air as he got out of a car. His wife was shot dead inside the vehicle
- In the Kherson region of southern Ukraine a family of five was killed by Russian soldiers at a checkpoint, according to relatives
2: Cutting off basic services
Water is the most basic of human necessities and there is evidence of deliberate Russian targeting of the supply in Chernihiv.
A pumping station on the outskirts of the city was hit on 14 March.
The attack badly damaged a water reservoir and destroyed a control room, according to the head of the water company
