Western Morning News (Saturday)
Kyiv police find 900 dead civilians
MORE than 900 civilian bodies have been discovered in the region around Ukraine’s capital following the withdrawal of Russian forces – most of them fatally shot, police said on Friday.
Andriy Nebytov, head of Kyiv’s regional police force, said bodies were abandoned in the streets or given temporary burials. He cited data indicating 95% died from gunshot wounds. “Consequently, we understand that under the (Russian) occupation, people were simply executed in the streets,” Mr Nebytov said.
More bodies are being found every day, he added.
“The most victims were found in Bucha, where there are more than 350 corpses,” he said.
The grim discoveries come as Russia’s Defence Ministry promised to ramp up missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital in response to Ukraine’s alleged military “diversions on the Russian territory”. The threat of intensified attacks on Kyiv came after Russian authorities accused Ukraine of wounding seven people and damaging about 100 residential buildings with air strikes on Bryansk, a region that borders Ukraine.
Kyiv has gradually displayed some signs of pre-war life after Russian troops failed to capture the city and retreated to focus on a concentrated assault in eastern
Ukraine, leaving evidence of possible war crimes in their wake. A renewed bombardment could return the capital’s residents to sheltering in subway stations and the steady wail of air raid sirens.
Ukrainian officials have not confirmed striking targets in Russia, and the reports by Russian authorities could not be independently verified.
But Ukrainian officials claimed their forces struck a key Russian warship with missiles on Thursday.
If true, the claim would represent an important victory. The guided-missile cruiser Moskva, pictured above, named after the Russian capital, sank while being towed to port on Thursday after suffering heavy damage under circumstances that remained in dispute. Moscow acknowledged a fire on board but not any attack. US and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze.
The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s
firepower in the Black Sea.
If Ukrainian forces took out the vessel, the Moskva probably represents the largest warship to be sunk in combat since the Falklands War when British submarine torpedoed Argentine navy cruiser General Belgrano.
The Russian warship’s loss in an invasion already widely seen as a historic blunder was also a symbolic defeat for Moscow as its troops regroup for an offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from the Kyiv region and much of the north. In his nightly address on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the people of his country should be proud of having survived 50 days under attack when the Russian invaders “gave us a maximum of five”.
News about the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war, at a horrific cost to civilians.
Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol are holding out against a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating.
David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Programme, said people were being “starved to death” in the city.