Serving under the man known as “Putin’s soldier” this killer squad has been linked to vile war crimes against civilians in Bucha—and their own severely injured brothers-in-arms. Ihor Yuschenko, 61, a former colonel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces who once served as the deputy chief of staff of ground forces in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, watched in horror as a war crime took place right outside his window in broad daylight. According to Yuschenko, a column of Russian troops advancing through the town stopped and opened fire on his street in central Bucha on Feb. 27, killing two pedestrians. This column had included Chechen fighters known as Kadyrovtsy, members of various military groupings who are loyal to Chechnya’s local strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, known as “Putin’s soldier.” Yuschenko said he was able to identify them by their black garb, their use of Islamic slogans, and Kadyrov’s name on their body armor. About an hour later, their column was decimated by the Ukrainian army in a different part of town—but the Kadyrovtsy returned. “Many Chechen soldiers penetrated this street to kill Ukrainian civilian people,” Yuschenko told The Daily Beast. He described how Chechen fighters, also dressed in black, shot up a car that had been driving down the street with at least “thirty bullets,” according to Yuschenko, killing its occupants and causing it to come to a stop on the side of the road next to the apartment building he was staying in. The Kadyrovtsy then allegedly dragged the two dead people whom they had shot out of the car, left them by the side of the road, and drove off in the car themselves. (…) According to Hurin, Ukrainian civilians were not the only people the Kadyrovtsy allegedly brutalized in the town. Hurin said that residents he spoke to in Borodyanka, which lies northwest of Bucha, recounted what the Kadyrovtsy did with injured Russian soldiers they brought there from Bucha. “They would bring heavily wounded Russian soldiers to a big hospital they had there, and those who were very heavily wounded, they would just shoot them,” he told The Daily Beast. “And no one other than the Kadyrovtsy did this.”
via daily beast: Brutal Sect of Putin’s Army Accused of Murdering Their Own Comrades