The bodies of over 1,000 civilians are being stored in morgues in the Kyiv region after Russian troops withdrew from areas around the capital, a senior Ukrainian official said on Thursday.
“1,020 bodies of civilians, in the areas of all the Kyiv region,” were discovered, Olga Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, said in Borodyanka.
While specifying that the date of the deaths to the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, she added, “These are only civilians collected from buildings, but also on the streets.”
Her remarks came after police in the Kyiv region stated they had found the remains of nine(9) civilians in Borodyanka, some 54 kilometres (34 miles) from the capital, buried in communal graves.
Oleksandr Pavliuk, the Kyiv regional governor, added the dead were “either killed or either tortured to death in the hostilities.”
“Forensic experts are now checking the bodies, but what we saw was hands tied behind the back, their legs tied and shot through the limbs, and in the back of the head,” he added.
The evacuation of Russian forces from towns & villages around Kyiv left a trail of civilian deaths, starting with discoveries in Bucha, which led Ukrainian officials to blame Russia for genocide.
At the starting of April, prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova told journalists that Ukraine had recovered 410 civilian bodies from areas it retook from the Russian army in the wider Kyiv region.