Police investigate 12,000 war deaths

THE bodies of several people whose hands were tied behind their backs have been found in the Kyiv region of Ukraine.

It comes as Ukrainian police investigate the killings of more than 12,000 compatriots nationwide during Russia’s war.

“Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured,” said Andriy Nebytov, of the Kyiv regional police.

“The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.”

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, the authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people.

One site that reporters saw was a mass grave in a forest near Bucha. Reporters also saw a mass grave just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle.

The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved from the mass grave.

Two were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and the head, Mr Nebytov said.

Nationwide, police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency yesterday that criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves.

He said the mass killings resulted from snipers firing from tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere is not known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday.

Mr Zelensky, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked: “Why is this happening in 2022? How could mass killings, torture, burned cities, and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories resembling Nazi concentration camps come true?”

An excavation team carries the body of a Ukrainian civilian believed to have been murdered by Russian soldiers