The mayor of the village of Motyzhyn, her husband and her son were killed and buried in a shallow grave, an adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said on Monday, showing their bodies partially covered by earth.
Since Russian troops withdrew from towns and villages around the capital Kiev last week, Ukrainian troops have been roaming the region, showing journalists bodies they say are civilians killed by Russian forces, houses destroyed and cars set on fire.
Reuters could not independently verify who killed the family seen at the grave in Motyzhyn, west of Kiev. Russia denies targeting civilians and said similar reports of killings were “staged” to tarnish Russia’s name.
“There were Russian occupiers here. They tortured and murdered the entire family of the village mayor,” Anton Herashchenko said, naming the dead as Olha Sukhenko, her husband Ihor Sukhenko and her son Oleksandr.
“The occupiers suspected that they were collaborating with our military, giving us locations from which to aim our artillery. This scum tortured, massacred and killed the entire family. They will be held accountable for it,” he added.
A Reuters reporter saw the bodies in a forest near a farm, which had been largely destroyed, on the outskirts of the village of Motyzhyn. A burned tractor could be seen to the side, and one of the buried bodies was blindfolded.
The Reuters journalist also saw another body of a man in a pit near the burned farm, where fire marks were seen on the few remaining walls.
Global outrage gathered steam on Monday over Ukraine’s civilian deaths after evidence emerged of people arrested at point-blank range and the discovery of a mass grave in areas reclaimed from Russian troops.
Reuters reporters on Sunday saw several dead bodies on the side of the road in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, one with his hands tied behind his back and a gunshot wound to the head – one of hundreds of local residents who, according to authorities, were found dead. after five weeks of Russian occupation.
On Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that all photographs and videos published by Ukrainian authorities alleging crimes by Russian troops in Bucha were a “provocation” and that no resident of Bucha had suffered violence at the hands of Russian troops.
Source: CNN Brasil
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