A suburban avenue in Bucha became one of the first graveyards for Russia's hopes of encircling and entering Kyiv and then deposing the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The moment came two or three days after the first Russian forces crossed into Ukraine on 24 February, when Ukrainian forces destroyed a column of Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers moving through the town of Bucha to the city of Kyiv.

The convoy was destroyed in one of the first of many Ukrainian ambushes that stopped the Russian advance dead. as part of what the Kremlin has presented as a calm and rational decision to concentrate on the war in eastern Ukraine. Moscow says, without proof or any reliability, that its war aims in central Ukraine have been achieved, and they never included capturing Kyiv.