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The name of Boutcha, once a peaceful suburb of kyiv, will undoubtedly remain as one of the symbols of the horror of the war in Ukraine. Nearly 300 dead were found in this city after the withdrawal of the Russian army, testified its mayor Anatoly Fedorouk on Saturday April 2. On the images taken on the spot, dozens of bodies lie in the streets. Redeployed in the east of the country, the Russian soldiers left behind them, in the towns they occupied near kyiv, a terrible picture of destruction and death, gradually discovered by Ukrainians and journalists.
The first images from Boutcha on Saturday were filmed from vehicles forced to slalom between corpses lying on the pavement of one of the main streets of the city. An AFP journalist counted at least 22 dead there. It is impossible to immediately determine whether they have been “shot in the back of the head”, as the mayor of the city asserts. But at least two of these men have head injuries. Another has his hands tied behind his back. A corpse is still on the bike it was on when it died. They seem to have been there for several days.
“We can’t even count them anymore”testifies to franceinfo a chaplain, Anatoli Kushnirchuk, who anticipates an even heavier toll: “Several of these corpses are in cellars or in places where Russian terrorists threw grenades. We haven’t dealt with them yet.” On Sunday, the local relief chief, Serhiï Kaplytchny, showed AFP a mass grave dug by the Russians in which he said he had counted 57 corpses.
In total, the mayor of Boutcha, Anatoly Fedoruk, had 287 dead in his town on Saturday. On Sunday, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova announced that 410 corpses of civilians had been discovered in all the territories taken over from the Russian army in the kyiv region, without advancing a specific assessment in Boutcha.
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Before the arrival of the Russian army on February 27, three days after the start of the invasion, Boutcha had a population of 37,000. Images from before the war suggest a peaceful tree-lined suburb. It is now devastated by shell craters, its buildings burned or destroyed, its streets littered with carcasses, at least one of which is riddled with bullets, according to AFP. The city had the misfortune to be located about fifteen kilometers northeast of kyiv, halfway between two priority targets of the Russian army: Hostomel, whose airport it tried to take from the first day of the invasion, and Irpin, gateway to the capital where intense fighting took place.
The withdrawal of Russian forces and the liberation of the surroundings of kyiv, claimed by Ukraine, also made it possible to discover the extent of the damage in Irpin. A report from France 2 shows a city devastated by the bombardments, where we also discover in the streets the corpses of inhabitants who seemed to be trying to flee.
A little further south, the Russian army also held until recent days a highway linking kyiv to western Ukraine. A BBC team reported on Friday that it had counted 13 charred bodies there, some of which also appear in images by a Ukrainian photographer. Footage filmed by drone by Ukrainian volunteers and obtained by the BBC shows Russian soldiers shooting down a couple of civilians en route to kyiv who were trying to turn back after seeing a tank. Their bodies are still there.
In these battle-ravaged areas, Ukrainians are also discovering mines and unexploded projectiles, which complicate exploration and continue to endanger civilians and soldiers. According to the Ukrainian emergency services, 643 explosive devices have been deactivated since the departure of Russian forces in Irpin and Boutcha alone. Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russians of having trapped certain corpses, remarks difficult to verify at present.
#Irpine West of #Kiev. The fighting stopped 3 days ago. The Russians are gradually withdrawing, leaving behind shells that have not exploded planted in the macadam, gutted buildings and stunned civilians who say they are coming back from hell. #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/bgmDMr7SDe
— Thibault Lefevre (@thibaultlefevre) April 2, 2022
Testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch lift the veil on what happened in these areas occupied by the Russian army. In Boutcha, a witness said he saw the soldiers arrest five men, force them to kneel on the side of a road and kill one of them with a bullet in the back of the head. AT Staryi Bykiv, About 80 km west of kyiv, a woman says she witnessed the arrest of two men, including her son, and then saw their bodies and those of four other victims executed. In another village near kyiv, a man told the NGO that he was threatened with being shot because soldiers had discovered a hunting rifle in his house. Another testimony relates to repeated rapes by soldiers and others to looting. These acts “should be investigated as suspected war crimes”believes Hugh Williamsonthe director of Human Rights Watch in Europe, in the press release of the NGO.
“The Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes.”assured Emmanuel Macron on Twitter about the deaths of Boutcha, evoking images “unsustainable” and “hundreds of cowardly murdered civilians”. Other leaders reacted, including the resident of the European Council, Charles Michel, who assured that the European Union would continue to participate in the collection of evidence in the context of the investigation already opened by the International Criminal Court into the crimes committed in Ukraine. ‘More EU sanctions and aid are on the way’he added.
“The Boutcha massacre was deliberate. The Russians want to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can.”
Dmytro Kouleba, Ukrainian Foreign Ministeron Twitter
In his message, the head of Ukrainian diplomacy shared photos of the horrors committed and demanded new sanctions against Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again accused Russia of committing a “genocide” in Ukraine to eliminate “the whole nation”.
Moscow, for its part, presented the images of the streets of Boutcha strewn with corpses like the “new production of the kyiv regime for Western media”, in a press release from the Ministry of Defense. As since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian discourse is at odds with the assertions of Ukraine and the journalists on the spot: “During the period when this locality was under the control of the Russian armed forces, not a single local resident suffered from violent actions”.