I understand it’s war and many things are possible, including lies about satellite images. But I certainly would not be surprised if Russian soldiers did it.
Maybe the food scattered among the bodies was a “last meal” before execution, in retaliation for Russians killed. People with their arms bound who were systematically executed, you would expect them to have been killed in a group and the bodies clustered together, but scattered along the road? It’s just hard to make the pieces fit any hypothesis.
Until or if there’s an unbiased forensic examination, we can’t sort out who was killed by fragments from shelling as opposed to bullets.
I don’t have any reason to assume either side are all angels or devils. In war you have psychopaths who find each other and go on killing sprees because the environment is permissive. No army is immune to atrocity.
The Russians may have assumed anybody left in the area who was of “fighting age” was a potential partisan. So, go house to house, pull out suspects and dispatch them immediately. Why bother to take time to gather them, be exposed to fire, etc.?
BTW, I did a bit of research on this company, Maxar, that supplied the satellite images. I’d say their business model would be severely damaged if they got caught faking images.
Some of the Russian statements are awfully clumsy lies. Rigor mortise usually relaxes in 24-48 hours, for example.