As Ukrainian forces retake areas around Kyiv previously held by Russian troops, atrocities by Vladimir Putin’s army are being seen for the first time. The bodies of civilians littered the street in one area, hands tied behind their backs and shot in the head. Mass graves were also found where hundreds of civilians were buried.
The dead include civilians, some of whom Ukrainian officials accused Russian forces of executing. Footage posted by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and photographs from The New York Times and Agence France-Presse showed the bodies of men in civilian clothes on the streets of Bucha, a town northwest of Kyiv. One photo shows three people lying on a roadside beside a pile of wooden pallets, blood darkening the ground beside them, one with white cloth binding his hands.
A request has been made for the International Criminal Court to visit the mass graves seen in Bucha, a suburb outside Kyiv.
The request comes as Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the discovery of the graves — made as Ukrainian troops recaptured territory and Russian forces pulled back from towns they had seized in the war’s earliest days — could “only be described as genocide.”
Condemnation of the alleged assault on civilians resounded around the world, with numerous countries demanding investigations and accountability, Russia’s Defense Ministry, however, questioned the authenticity of some of the photos from Bucha.
Warning: The footage below is graphic and disturbing.