Ukrainian authorities have collected 765 bodies of civilians, including 30 children, in the Kyiv area since Russian forces were routed there at the start of April, a senior prosecutor in the region has said.
Oleh Tkalenko, the Kyiv region deputy head prosecutor, warned that authorities expected many more dead bodies would be found in the coming weeks.
“This is only the beginning. We have only just started working in the bigger towns such as Borodianka, Hostomel, Irpin and Bucha,” Tkalenko said, referring to the number of dead civilians. “There’s a lot we haven’t dug up yet.”
Several mass graves have been discovered since Ukrainian authorities regained control of swathes of the Kyiv region that had been under Russian occupation.
“Documenting each individual correctly takes time and effort,” said Tkalenko. “But we need to do this so that we have the evidence so that there won’t be any such about it being a fake.”
“I believe that [Russian soldiers] deliberately left the bodies of citizens they killed on the streets and prohibited people from burying them in order to intimidate the population,” Tkalenko said.
He also described three cases of alleged torture against groups of civilians in the region, which his office is investigating. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians and has said that Ukrainian and western allegations of war crimes are concocted.
Tkalenko claimed that in the town of Motyzhyn, Russian soldiers picked out nine people who they believed had helped the Ukrainian army. Six people were tortured to death and three survived, he said.
“They were stripped naked, put in pits, beaten. They were shot in the legs, arms, and tortured,” Tkalenko said. “They starved them.”
Tkalenko said they had begun work on a larger case allegedly involving more than 40 people in the village of Dymer, north of Kyiv.
“They were used as forced labourers. They made them dig their own bass and broke their fingers,” Tkalenko said. “They shot near their heads and between their legs. Those who refused to speak, or if they did not like what they were saying, were shot in the arm.”
“They were strangled, their arms were twisted,” Tkalenko said.
The third case, still under investigation, took place on the territory of a golf club near the town of Makariv. Russian forces were using the golf club as their headquarters and detained a group of local residents.
“They were buried alive, forced to dig a grave, beaten,” Tkalenko said.
Tkalenko declined to give exact figures on the instances of sexual violence or rape that they have documented. According to him, the number of rape cases opened by prosecutors in the Kyiv region is in the tens. He stressed, however, that women were reluctant to file police reports if they had suffered acts of sexual violence because they believed the perpetrators would not be caught. Instead, they were contacting psychologists and doctors for help.
“People are ashamed to talk about rape,” said Tkalenko. “We are approaching individuals and talking to them one by one.
“People are more ready to talk about torture cases.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Tuesday that the number of rape cases is in the hundreds. A spokesperson for Zelenskiy’s office declined to give an exact figure or further details about where the alleged crimes had taken place and against whom. The general prosecutor’s office could not be reached for comment on the exact number of cases.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Lyudmila Denisova, stated on 8 April that 25 women were kept in a basement in a house in Bucha and systemically raped.
“It’s hard to talk about what goes on in their head,” said Tkalenko about the psychology of Russian troops. “But I would say that the Russian army is made up of people who couldn’t afford the bribe to get out of conscription.”
“They even stole people’s boilers,” said Tkalenko.
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism