Civilians in Bucha Ukraine Resist Russian Soldiers ‘They Were All Shot’
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When Ukrainian forces liberating the town near Kyiv arrived they found streets littered with corpses of civilians and burned-out Russian tanks. “They were all shot,” said the mayor.
The E.U. is building the case to formally accuse Russia of war crimes with horror of the invasion of Bucha reveals.
“All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP, adding that 280 other bodies had been buried in mass graves in the town. “These are the consequences of Russian occupation.”
Ukrainian soldiers in Bucha, who were welcomed warmly by residents of the town, attached cables to the bodies and pulled them off the street for fear they may be booby-trapped.
Soldiers also cleared barricades and inspected suspicious objects, placing red rags on remnants of unexploded ordnance to draw attention to the possibility of explosions.
As the town was liberated, one woman, Halyna Tovkach, 55, told the Guardian that she was searching for the body of her husband, Oleg, 62. He was killed by Russian soldiers along with their neighbours, two young boys and their mother, as they tried to escape the town on 5 March. “It is a war crime,” said Tovkach’s son.
Also allegedly among the civilians killed by the Russians was Olha Sukhenko,the head of the village of Motyzhin east of Kyiv, and her entire family.
An in another accusation of war crimes, Russian troops allegedly used children as “human shields” while regrouping.
Ukraine’s attorney general is gathering a dossier of claims about the Russian use of local children to avoid fire when in retreat from around Ukraine’s capital and elsewhere. Coaches of children were said to have been placed in front of tanks in the village of Novyi Bykiv, close to the encircled city of Chernihiv, 100 miles north of Kyiv.
Britain’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, said she was “appalled by atrocities in Bucha and other towns in Ukraine”.
“Reports of Russian forces targeting innocent civilians are abhorrent. The UK is working with others to collect evidence and support @IntlCrimCourt war crimes investigation. Those responsible will be held to account,” Truss tweeted late on Saturday.
Appalled by atrocities in Bucha and other towns in Ukraine. Reports of Russian forces targeting innocent civilians are abhorrent.
The UK is working with others to collect evidence and support @IntlCrimCourt war crimes investigation. Those responsible will be held to account.
— Liz Truss (@trussliz) April 2, 2022
Ukraine and its western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building its troop strength in eastern Ukraine. The visible shift did not mean the country faced a reprieve from more than five weeks of war or that the more than 4 million refugees who have fled Ukraine will return soon.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, again repeated his warning that Russian troops want to capture the Donbas and the south of Ukraine. In his nightly video address on Saturday, Zelenskyy said “we are aware that the enemy has reserves to increase pressure in the east”
