In the recently liberated town of Butja, the streets are “strewn with corpses.” That said mayor Anatoly Fedoruk on Saturday to the AFP news agency. Images on social media show the bodies of the deceased lying on the street and in driveways. Some of the dead have their hands tied behind their backs. It would be mostly male deaths in civilian clothes.
According to Fedoruk, nearly 300 victims have already been buried in mass graves. These numbers are for NRC not verifiable. The city’s regular cemeteries would still be within firing range of the Russian occupiers, making it too dangerous to bury the dead here. Earlier in the day, journalists from AFP reported that they had seen at least twenty corpses in a street in Boetsja.
Russian troops are withdrawing from the Kiev region, where they have suffered heavy casualties. Ukrainian deputy defense minister Anna Maljar said on Saturday that the entire province has now been liberated from the Russians. Russia is expected to shift military focus to the eastern front in the Donbas region.
Also read: How a soldier becomes a murderer
This article is also part of our live blog: Lithuania is the first EU country to stop importing Russian gas