According to Ukrainian officials, Russian forces killed a village chief, her husband, and her son. This, along with the discovery of the bodies of five men dressed in civilian clothes, has added to the mounting evidence of atrocities in Ukraine. Yogita Limaye of the BBC went to see the two scenes.
The horror of what happened during the Russian occupation is finally being revealed in the town of Bucha, just outside Kyiv.
Five bodies lay crumpled on the ground in the basement of a building that once housed a children’s community center – five men dressed in civilian clothes, their hands bound behind their backs.
Some were shot in the head, while others were shot in the chest. They had yet to be identified, but Ukrainian officials said the men were kidnapped and executed by Russian soldiers.
“We heard them being shot,” Vlad, one of the volunteers who helped carry the bodies up from the basement, said. “We heard mines detonating in the area. There are mines all around us. We are fortunate to be alive.”
Vlad described hearing a husband calling after his wife, who had gone out into the street to get some water, followed by a barrage of shots. Later, he discovered the bodies of both his husband and wife. “I have so many stories to tell you, but I don’t want to,” he explained. “I’d like to forget about them.”
Four bodies were discovered in a shallow grave in the woods near the village of Motoyzhyn. Three people have been identified: 51-year-old Olha Sukhenko, her husband Igor, and her 25-year-old son Oleksander.
Olha was the village’s leader. It is believed that she and her family were murdered on suspicion of assisting Ukrainian soldiers and that they were left half-buried on the edge of the woods, with Olha’s hand and her son’s face visible through the dirt.
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid a visit to Bucharest. “We want you to demonstrate to the rest of the world what happened here, what the Russian military did, and what the Russian Federation did in peaceful Ukraine. It was critical for you to recognize that these were civilians “He stated.
He stated that Ukraine was still willing to negotiate with Russia. “Ukraine deserves peace,” he said, according to the BBC. “We can’t go on living with war. Every day, our army fights, but we don’t want millions of lives to be lost. That is why we must engage in dialogue with Russia.”
There were reports of a mass grave being dug in Bucha to accommodate bodies from the morgue’s overflowing morgue. Dead civilians with their hands tied behind their backs were depicted in images and video footage. On Monday, evidence of grave atrocities in this once-peaceful city grew by the hour.
Some of what happened here, just west of Kyiv, is now known. However, there are still cities and towns in Ukraine that are under Russian control. The fear is that what was discovered here will be discovered elsewhere, that more bodies will be discovered in basements and shallow graves.