If they didn't, said Ukraine's national prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, standing at the graveside, "then it will mean that we don't have law, or rule of law, at all." With the scale of the bloodshed becoming apparent, Ukrainian officials urged the international community to bring alleged crimes committed in Ukraine to an international tribunal. As they searched the garden for further evidence, one of the investigators stopped and shook his head.
The noose she had used to hang herself was still visible on a tree below a canopy of vines. In the town's northern sector, police entered a yard and found a woman who had died by suicide. In Bucha, Washington Post reporters witnessed other corpses being discovered.ĭown a woodland path off Yablunska Street, the body of a Ukrainian man, identified by his wife, had been left behind by Russian soldiers after their retreat. On Friday, officials in Makariv, southwest of Bucha, said authorities had collected at least 132 bodies, while the search continued. The prosecutor's task is the same as that of officials in other cities where abuses by Russian forces have been reported. "All necessary examinations will be conducted," he said. Ruslan Kravchenko, the Bucha district's war crimes prosecutor, said the team had examined 21 bodies, 19 of them killed by gunshots or shrapnel. "There are people who say that their kids are buried there," Lukianenko said anxiously, as she placed a reassuring arm around her daughter, Anna. Others were simply part of the daily violence that the soldiers - some drunk, some scared - used to instill terror among the population.Īt the mass grave Friday, forensics officials worked carefully on the sandy earth, pulling body bag after body bag from the pit onto the ground before they opened them, registered them and then zipped them gently shut. Investigators say that dozens of these followed prolonged abuse. But executions took place throughout the town.
That number did not include those catalogued throughout the day Friday.Īccording to residents who endured Russia's occupation, a district's treatment depended on its occupiers. Ukrainian officials said early Friday that they had collected 320 bodies in their week-long search through Bucha, almost half of which had yet to be identified. Dressed in black fatigues and a vest that read "War Crimes Prosecutor," the most senior official turned to his colleague, who would count them. Officials had suggested that it contained at least 50 bodies. In a clearing not far away there was another body, left with the detritus of what had been a Russian military camp.Īs police fanned out across the town in search of more, investigators gathered at a mass grave near a gold-topped church in central Bucha. In a basement, they found five men, each with his hands tied together before someone shot them in the head.
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