UKRAINIAN troops are finding brutalised bodies and widespread destruction in suburbs of the capital Kyiv as Russian soldiers withdraw and Moscow focuses its attacks elsewhere.
Associated Press (AP) journalists in Bucha, a small city north-west of Kyiv, saw the bodies of at least nine people in civilian clothes who appeared to have been killed at close range. At least two had their hands tied behind their backs. The reporters also saw two bodies wrapped in plastic, bound with tape and thrown into a ditch.
Authorities said they were documenting evidence as Ukraine’s military reclaims territory and discovers indications of execution-style killings to add to their case for prosecuting Russian officials for war crimes. Around 400 bodies of civilians have been discovered so far, according to reports.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said scores of civilians who had been killed were found on the streets of Bucha and the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin and Hostomel in what looked like a “scene from a horror movie”.
Arestovych said some people were shot in the head and had their hands bound, and some bodies showed signs of torture, rape and burning.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said civilians were “shot with joined hands” and told German newspaper Bild that “what happened in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv can only be described as genocide”.
A day earlier, AP journalists witnessed Ukrainian soldiers removing at least six bodies from a street in Bucha with cables in case the Russians had booby-trapped corpses with explosives before their withdrawal.
Local residents said the dead were civilians killed without provocation, a claim that could not be independently verified.
Klitschko called on other nations to immediately end Russian gas imports, saying they were funding the invasion of Ukraine, now in its 39th day. “Not a penny should go to Russia any more. That’s bloody money used to slaughter people. The gas and oil embargo must come immediately,” he said.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, wrote on Twitter that he was shocked by the “haunting images of atrocities committed by Russian army” in the capital region.
The EU and non-governmental organisations were assisting in the effort to preserve evidence of war crimes, according to Michel, who promised “further EU sanctions” against Russia.
Yesterday morning, Russian forces launched an air strike on the Black Sea port of Odesa, in southern Ukraine, sending up clouds of dark smoke that veiled parts of the city. The Russian military said the targets were an oil processing plant and fuel depots around what is Ukraine’s largest port and home to its navy.
The Odesa city council said Ukraine’s air defence shot down some missiles before they hit the city. Ukrainian military spokesman Vladyslav Nazarov said there were no casualties from the attack.
The smaller port of Mariupol remained cut off from the rest of the country as Russian and Ukrainian soldiers fought for control of the besieged city. About 100,000 civilians – less than a quarter of the pre-war population of 430,000 – are believed to be trapped there with little or no food, water, fuel and medicine.
The International Committee of the Red Cross hoped a team of nine staffers and three vehicles it sent on to help evacuate residents would reach Mariupol yesterday but said: “The situation on the ground is volatile and subject to rapid changes.”
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Ukrainian authorities said Russia agreed days ago to allow safe passage from the city, which has been the site of some of the worst attacks and greatest suffering, but similar agreements have broken down repeatedly under continued shelling.
Mariupol is in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region. Its capture would create an unbroken land corridor from Russia to Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. With Mariupol squarely in Russia’s sights, Ukraine insisted it had gained ground elsewhere, with territory north of Kyiv regained from departing Russian troops.
But the regional governor in Kharkiv, said yesterday that Russian artillery and tanks performed over 20 strikes on Ukraine’s second-largest city and its outskirts in the country’s northeast over the past day.
Governor Oleh Synyehubov said a missile strike on the city of Lozovo wounded four people and that Russian tanks bombarded a hospital in the town of Balakliia.
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