Videos and eyewitness testimony provided evidence of Russian troops executing eight Ukrainian men in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, implicating them in a possible war crime, The New York Times reported.

“I was shot and I fell down. I fell down and I pretended to be dead. I fled 15 minutes after the Russian troops left”, - the lone survivor of the March 4 execution, 43-year-old builder Ivan Skyba, recounted to the NYT.

He was one of the 9 men rounded up by Russian paratroopers and brought to their makeshift base and field hospital inside a 4-story office building. 6 of them, including Skyba, had been manning a nearby checkpoint during Russia’s advance. One was a homeowner who had offered them and two other fighters a hideout.

Most of the victims were local residents who had reportedly joined various defense forces due to Ukraine’s restrictions on men leaving the country.

A drone video the NYT said was filmed the next day on March 5 showed the dead bodies with two Russian soldiers standing beside them. One of the bodies was wearing the same blue sweatshirt seen in one of several widely spread photographs that have fueled global outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.