BUHA, Ukraine (AP) – The bodies of handcuffed people, gunshot wounds and signs of torture were scattered in a town on the outskirts of Kiev after Russian troops withdrew from the area. Ukrainian authorities on Sunday accused the outgoing forces of committing war crimes and left behind a “horror movie scene”.
As images of the bodies emerged from the Bucha, European leaders condemned the atrocities and called for tougher sanctions against Moscow. As a sign of how horrific reports shocked many leaders, the German Defense Minister even suggested to the European Union to consider banning the import of Russian gas.
Ukrainian officials say the bodies of 410 civilians were found in cities in the Kiev region recently recaptured by Russian forces.
Associated Press reporters saw the bodies of at least 21 people in various locations around Buha, northwest of the capital. A group of nine, all in civilian clothes, were dispersed around a site that residents said was being used as a base by Russian troops. They seemed to have been killed at close range. At least two had their hands tied behind their backs, one was shot in the head and another had their legs tied.
Ukrainian officials have blamed Russian troops for the killings, with the president calling them evidence of genocide. But the Russian Defense Ministry dismissed the allegations as “provocative.”
The revelations followed Russia’s retreat from the region after Moscow said it was focusing its attack on the east of the country. Russian troops entered Bukha in the first days of the invasion and remained awake until March 30.
A resident, who declined to be named for fear of security, said Russian troops went from building to building and pulled people out of basements where they were hiding, checking their phones for evidence of anti-Russian activity before taking them. away or shooting them.
Hanna Herega, another resident, said Russian troops began firing on a neighbor who had gone out to collect firewood.
“They hit him a little over the heel, crushing the bone, and he fell down,” Herega said. “Then they shot him completely in the left leg, with the boot. “Then they shot him everywhere.”
The AP also saw two bodies, that of a man and a woman, wrapped in plastic that residents said they had covered and placed on an axis until the proper funeral was arranged.
“He raised his hands and they shot him,” said the resident, who declined to be named.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described the suburban corpses as a “horror movie scene”. He claimed that some of the women had been raped before being killed and that the Russians had subsequently burned the bodies.
In a video speech, Zelensky said Russian soldiers who killed and tortured civilians were responsible for “accumulated evil.”
“It’s time to do our utmost to make the war crimes of the Russian army the latest manifestation of such evil on earth,” he said in a statement translated from his office.
He directed some of his remarks to the mothers of the Russian soldiers who took part.
“Even if you grew up looting, how did they become butchers?” he said. “You could not ignore the fact that they lack everything human. Without soul. Without heart. “They killed deliberately and with pleasure.”
Zelensky said his government would take steps to set up a special justice mechanism to investigate any crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.
Zelensky also appeared in a videotaped message at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, contrasting the lives of those who attended the Las Vegas awards ceremony with the lives of musicians in his battered homeland.
“Our musicians wear armor instead of tuxedos. “They sing to the wounded in hospitals, even to those who do not hear them,” he said. “But the music will leak anyway.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the photos and videos of the corpses “managed the Kiev regime for the Western media.”
The ministry said that “not a single civilian” in Bukha had encountered violent military action and that the mayor had not reported any abuse a day after the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Russia called a meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday to discuss the situation in the city. The United States and Britain have recently accused Russia of using Security Council meetings to spread misinformation.
In Motyzhyn, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Kiev, residents told the AP on Sunday that Russian troops had killed the city mayor, her husband and her son and dumped their bodies in a pit in a pine forest behind houses where the Russian forces had slept.
Inside the pit, AP reporters saw four bodies of people who appeared to have been shot at close range. The mayor’s husband had his hands behind his back, with a piece of rope close by, and a piece of plastic wrapped around his eyes like a blindfold.
Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed that the mayor was killed while being held by Russian forces.
Some European leaders have said that the killings in the Kiev region were tantamount to war crimes. The United States has previously said it believes Russia has committed war crimes, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken described images of what happened near Kyiv as a “punch in the gut” on CNN’s State of the Union.
“It is a barbarity against civilians that we have not seen in Europe for decades,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on the same show.
Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko has called on nations to immediately end imports of Russian gas, saying they are financing the killings.
In a reversal, the German defense minister said the EU should consider doing just that. The ministers “should talk about cutting off gas supplies from Russia,” Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht told German public television network ARD on Sunday night. “Such crimes must not go unanswered.”
Russia supplies 40% of Europe’s gas and 25% of its oil, and so far many EU nations have resisted calls to reduce or completely end their dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Abandoning them would mean even higher pump prices and higher utility bills, potentially creating an energy crisis and recession.
The United States has previously announced a ban on Russian oil, but imports only a small portion of Russia’s oil exports and does not buy any of its gas.
As Russian forces withdrew from the area around the capital, they also withdrew from the Sumy area in northeastern Ukraine, local administrator Dmitry Zivitsky said in a video broadcast by Ukrainian news agencies on Sunday. The troops had occupied the area for almost a month.
They intensified their sieges in other parts of the country. Russia has said it is sending troops to Donbass in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years.
In this area, Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov that has seen some of the worst of the war, has been cut off. About 100,000 civilians – less than a quarter of the 430,000 pre-war population – are believed to be trapped there with little or no food, water, fuel and medicine.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Sunday that a team sent on Saturday to help evacuate residents had not yet arrived in the city.
Ukrainian authorities said Russia had agreed a few days ago to allow safe passage through the city, but similar agreements have repeatedly collapsed under constant bombardment.
The mayor of Chernihiv, where he has also been cut off from food and other supplies for weeks, said the relentless Russian bombing had destroyed 70 percent of the northern city.
The Ukrainian military said early Monday that its forces had retaken some towns in the Chernihiv region and that humanitarian aid was being delivered. The road between Chernihiv and the capital, Kyiv, was to be reopened to traffic later in the morning, according to the RBK Ukraina news agency.
The regional governor in Kharkiv said Sunday that Russian artillery and tanks fired more than 20 blows at Ukraine’s second largest city and its northeastern suburbs yesterday.
The head of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks with Russia said that the Moscow negotiators had informally agreed on most of the draft proposal that was discussed during face-to-face talks in Istanbul this week, but no written confirmation has been given.
The Russian invasion has left thousands dead and has forced more than 4 million Ukrainians to flee their country.
Qena reported from Motyzhyn, Ukraine. Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Associated Press reporters around the world contributed to this report.
