By the Associated Press:
Bodies with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture lay scattered in a city on the outskirts of Kyiv after Russian soldiers withdrew from the area. Ukrainian authorities accused the departing forces on Sunday of committing war crimes and leaving behind a “scene from a horror movie.”
As images of the bodies began to emerge from Bucha, a slew of European leaders condemned the atrocities and called for tougher sanctions against Moscow. In a sign of how the horrific reports shook many leaders, Germany’s defense minister even suggested that the European Union consider banning Russian gas imports.
So far, the bodies of 410 civilians have been found in Kyiv-area towns that were recently retaken from Russian forces, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general, Iryna Venediktova, said.
Associated Press journalists saw the bodies of at least 21 people in various spots around Bucha, northwest of the capital. One group of nine, all in civilian clothes, were scattered around a site that residents said Russian troops used as a base. They appeared to have been killed at close range. At least two had their hands tied behind their backs, one was shot in the head, and another’s legs were bound.
Ukrainian officials laid the blame for the killings in Bucha and other Kyiv suburbs squarely at the feet of Russian troops, with the president calling them evidence of genocide. But Russia’s Defense Ministry rejected the accusations as “provocation.”
The discoveries followed the Russian retreat from the area around the capital, territory that has seen heavy fighting since troops invaded Ukraine from three directions on Feb. 24. Troops who swept in from Belarus to the north spent weeks trying to clear a path to Kyiv, but their advance stalled in the face of resolute defense from Ukraine’s forces.
Moscow now says it is focusing its offensive on the country’s east, but it also pressed a siege on a city in the north and continued to strike cities elsewhere in a war that has left thousands dead and forced more than 4 million Ukrainians to flee their country.
