On the same night that Russia announced it would soon evacuate all diplomatic staff members from Ukraine, social media videos verified by The Times’s Visual Investigations team showed men burning documents and loading boxes into cars at the Russian consulate in Odessa.
The videos, posted by two accounts on the messaging service Telegram and filmed sometime on Tuesday night, showed piles of documents and possibly other items on fire in a courtyard inside the walls of the consulate.
Other videos posted on Twitter by a freelance photojournalist, Ethan Swope, appeared to show flickering light from flames in the rear courtyard of the Russian embassy in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and smoke rising from the courtyard.
