A CRIME SCENE

SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED in the basement of the children’s summer camp in Bucha. The steps leading down to its unlocked door were lousy with trash from Russian army rations: dried macaroni, empty juice boxes, tins of meat. Standing at the bottom of the stairwell, Volodymyr Roslik, the camp groundskeeper, looked up and raised an eyebrow at me, as if to offer one more chance to reconsider going in.

The airless tunnel behind that door resembled a series of torture chambers divided by concrete walls. There was a room that appeared to be used for executions at the front, its walls pocked with bullet holes. In the next room stood two chairs, an empty jug, and a wooden plank. In another, the Russians had brought in two metal bedsprings and leaned them against the wall. To Ukrainian investigators, the tableaux suggested that prisoners were tortured here: tied to the bedsprings and interrogated; strapped to the