“He raised his hands above his head – and at the moment he was shot,” Oleksandr Radzikhovskiy of the Ukrainian Defense Forces told CNN. Radzikhovskiy is a member of Bugatti, a special intelligence unit operating on the outskirts of Kiev. The unit filmed the March 7 incident on the E-40 – a major highway connecting the western city of Lviv with Kyiv – with a drone as Russian forces held the area. In the video, Russian tanks are seen pointing east to Kyiv – in the direction Russian forces were pushing in early March – as civilians tried to flee a nearby town. “A group of cars left a small town just outside Irpin, where they sat for about 10 days without food, water or warm clothes,” said Radzikhovskiy. “They did not know what was happening, they did not know that the Russian forces had advanced and taken this position.” “There was an ambush by Russian tanks and Russian personnel,” Radzikhovskiy said. “They opened fire.” In the video, after the man falls to the ground, Russian troops approach the vehicle. Two people – later confirmed by CNN with their families – six-year-old Gordey Iovenko and a female family friend – get out of the car. The woman wraps her arm around Iovenko, trying to shield him from the death that surrounds them. Iovenko had just lost his parents, Maxim, 32, who was motionless on the ground, and his mother, Ksenia, 37, who was killed by Russian fire inside the car. Iovenko and the woman are then taken to a forest area by Russian forces. Meanwhile, other troops search the car and inspect Maksim Iovenko’s body before dragging him to the side of the road. The BBC first reported on Iovenko’s death. Radzikhovskiy’s drone unit, which was only 500 meters (0.3 miles) away, filmed the entire scene. “… We understood everything, every moment and detail of this murder,” he said. “Since then we have had to live with this image in our head,” he added. Nearly a month after the incident, CNN visited the scene on the E-40 highway near Myla, where the devastation left behind by Russian forces in their retreat was fully apparent. The decaying corpses were scattered along the road, the charred bodies were still leaning on the vehicles they were driving and the same car shown in the drone video – which burned completely – was at the same spot where it stopped on March 7. “You can see it is like a shooting range … The cars are in order,” Radzikhovskiy, who told CNN the location of the incident. “There are no cars (beyond a certain point) because they were not allowed to come. They just fired as soon as they approached,” he added. The Kremlin has denied allegations that it targeted civilians or civilian infrastructure in what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. It has also reduced allegations of murder in cities such as Bucha, Irpin or Borodianka as false news and announced its own investigation into them. However, CNN saw the remains of a camp used by the Russian army in the forest area where Iovenko and the woman were taken. It was filled with Russian military rations, currency and abandoned equipment – some with “V” symbols painted on them – proof that their soldiers held this position for about three weeks. Iovenko and his family friend were later released by the Russians, family members told CNN. Radzikhovskiy’s team sent a video of the incident to the Ukrainian prosecutor for investigation and also submitted it to the war crimes unit of the UK Metropolitan Police, which is gathering evidence of war crimes in Ukraine for a possible future trial. Ukraine’s Attorney General Iryna Venediktova told CNN: “When we see such cases when our cars are burning and people inside the cars are being shot and burned, and we see that it is systemic, it is not just war crimes, it is crimes against humanity and you will do everything to prove it “. The gloomy incident further fueled Radzikhovskiy’s unit to continue assisting the Ukrainian army with their drones. Radzikhovskiy, a Ukrainian senior software engineer living in St. Petersburg. Albans of England, before the war, said he could not remain inactive as his country came under attack. He returned to Ukraine to try to help fight the Russian invasion in the best way possible. “In normal life, before the war, we were civilians who liked to fly drones loosely and just make nice videos on YouTube,” he said. “But when the war started, we became a vital part of the resistance.” His unit regularly flies their drones, documenting Russian positions and reporting them to the Ukrainian army. “They call us eyes, because we are eyes, we can see. And if you can see and you can report, you can make artillery strikes,” he said, adding: “reference,” he said. surprising.” Radzikhovskiy’s unit shared several hours of drone footage showing Russian tanks operating in the woods around Kyiv. In one video, a few moments after the tanks are seen, they are hit by Ukrainian artillery. The unit is a base business, using store-bought drones, but their method is how Ranjowski feels more comfortable. And he is forced to continue the work. “There is no other way, we can not back down – because if we did, Ukraine would not exist.”
