From brutal occupation to brazen recruitment: Russia turns Bucha residents against their own

Four years after the Ukrainian town experienced some of the war’s worst atrocities, a 21-year-old planted bombs outside his own apartment building

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n a recent evening in March, Bohdan Tymchenko, a quiet and unassuming man from Bucha, logged on to his computer to play the popular video game World of Tanks. Less than two weeks later, he planted two bombs outside his flat.

What unfolded in the intervening days offers a stark glimpse into a growing pattern: Ukrainians drawn in online by Russian intelligence services, promised money or coerced into carrying out sabotage attacks against their own country.

That the bombing occurred in Bucha – a leafy town on the outskirts of Kyiv that has become synonymous with the brutality of Russia’s invasion – has only deepened the shock.