In the small town near Kyiv, it was “much more terrible” than in Bucha, said Ukrainian President Zelenskiy.
(Photo: IMAGO/ZUMA Wire)
Kyiv, Dusseldorf After the withdrawal of Russian troops, dozens of dead civilians were also found in a mass grave west of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Saturday. “Near the Busowa gas station we found dead civilians in a pit today,” said Taras Didych, the head of the Dmytrivka municipality, which includes Busowa and other surrounding villages, on Sunday night on Ukrainian television.
The bodies were found in a ditch near a gas station. It is not yet clear how many deaths there are.
On the route from Kyiv to Zhytomyr, about 15 kilometers from the capital, the bodies of a dozen cars that had been shot at were found. The information cannot yet be independently verified.
Busowa was under Russian occupation for weeks. During the siege of Kiev by Russian troops, a number of communities around the capital – including Makariv, Bucha, Irpin and Dmytrivka – were under constant fire.
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In the first days of the war, Russian troops tried to blockade the Ukrainian capital. However, they were stopped and pushed back by Ukrainian units on the main route to the west.
Mass graves with civilians in more and more places
After the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from northern Ukraine, mass graves with civilians are being found in more and more places. Only on Friday were 67 bodies recovered from a mass grave near a church in Bucha. Many had gunshot wounds, said the Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova from Ort. “What does that mean? It means they killed, shot civilians,” she said.
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The city’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, said that at least three sites where mass shootings of civilians took place have been discovered so far. Bodies are still being found in gardens, parks and squares. “90 percent of the civilians died from gunshot wounds and not from (artillery) fire,” he said on Ukrainian television on Thursday.
Venediktova said none of the dead recovered from the mass grave was Russian. The Attorney General’s Office is investigating the Bucha atrocities as possible war crimes.
The Ukrainian government accuses Russian soldiers of having massacred civilians in Bucha and other cities around Kyiv, such as Borodyanka. The exact number of dead is still unclear, according to Ukrainian information there were hundreds in Bucha alone – and by no means all the bodies have been recovered.
Zelensky: In Borodyanka it was “much more terrible” than in Bucha
The Ukrainian President Zelensky recently said on Thursday night that things were “much more terrible” in the small town of Borodjanka near Kyiv, where clean-up work was being carried out than in Bucha. There are “more victims” there. In the heavily contested port city of Mariupol, “almost every street” is like what the world saw in Bucha and other places around Kyiv after the Russian troops withdrew.
A good six weeks ago, Russia attacked Ukraine. The United Nations had already registered more than 1,700 dead civilians. However, like the Ukrainian government in Kyiv, they assume that the number of civilian casualties will be far higher.
More: You can read all current developments on the Ukraine war in our news blog