‘Butcher of Bucha’ is commander Colonel Azatbek Omurbekov, blessed by Orthodox Church

Russian commander suspected of ‘evil, utterly inhuman’ war crimes is a veteran soldier blessed by the Orthodox Church.

Lt. Col Azatbek Omurbekov, a Russian commander, has been named as the Butcher of Bucha. Picture: Twitter.

WARNING: Graphic

The Russian commander suspected of committing “utterly inhuman” war crimes in Bucha has been named as a veteran soldier who was blessed by the Orthodox Church late last year.

Lieutenant Colonel Azatbek Omurbekov is commander of the 64th Separate Motorised Rifle Brigade which was involved in the occupation of Bucha, a town about 15 miles outside Kyiv. Russian troops under his command allegedly murdered unarmed civilians and there have been reports of rape of women and children.

Since Russian troops retreated there have been discoveries of mass graves and of corpses with their hands tied behind their backs.

InformNapalm, a Ukrainian volunteer initiative that monitors the activities of the Russian military and special services, said it used open-source intelligence to identify the commander. His personal details were published online.

Bodies lie in a mass grave in Bucha, Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has accused Russian forces of committing a "deliberate massacre" as they occupied and eventually retreated from Bucha, 25km northwest of Kyiv. Picture: Getty

Omurbekov, whose unit is based in a town outside Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East, was blessed by an Orthodox priest in November before his deployment to Ukraine. “History shows that we fight most of our battles with our souls,” Omurbekov said after the service, which was led by the Bishop of Khabarovsk. “Weapons are not the most important thing.”

The colonel, who is thought to be about 40 years old, was given a medal for outstanding service in 2014 by Dmitry Bulgakov, the deputy Russian defence minister. He now stands accused of orchestrating the rape, pillage and murder of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians. The death toll in Bucha has already reached between 330 and 340, according to local media.

Under international law, a military commander is responsible for any war crimes committed by his troops.

Almost 4000 civilians remained in Bucha throughout the occupation. Anatoliy Fedoruk, the mayor, told people who fled the fighting to avoid returning home. He said the town had been booby-trapped with mines by the retreating Russians. Lyudmyla Denisova, the Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman, said up to 300 bodies could be in one mass grave by a church.

Oleksii Reznikov, the defence minister, described the behaviour of Russian troops in Bucha as “utterly inhuman” and compared them to Nazis. “This is what the SS troops used to do in the past,” he said. “This evil simply cannot go unpunished.”

City mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP that 280 other bodies had been buried in mass graves. One rescue official said 57 people were found in one hastily dug trench behind a church.

InformNapalm published images of Russian soldiers who served alongside Omurbekov, although all the men identified denied being responsible for the crimes in videos posted on social media. “I’m not a soldier. I never took part in any military operations,” one said. “People say that I was involved in the war in Ukraine, that I killed people and children – it’s all lies,” another said. “You don’t have a single bit of proof.”

The Times