The bodies of more than 900 civilians were discovered in the Kyiv region following the withdrawal of Russian forces, the regional police chief said in a briefing Friday.
Andriy Nebytov, the head of Kyiv’s regional police force, said the bodies had been abandoned in the streets or given temporary burials.
He cited police data indicating that 95% of the casualties had died from sniper fire and gunshot wounds.
“Consequently, we understand that under the (Russian) occupation, people were simply executed in the streets,” Nebytov said.
“The number of killed civilians has surpassed 900 – and I emphasize, these are civilians, whose bodies we have discovered and handed over for forensic examination.”
He added that more bodies were being found every day, under the rubble and in mass graves.
“The most victims were found in Bucha, where there are more than 350 corpses,” he said.
According to Nebytov, utilities workers in Bucha had been gathering up and burying bodies in the Kyiv suburb while it remained under Russian control.
Nebytov added that Russian troops were “tracking down” people who expressed strong pro-Ukrainian views.
“So there were two mass graves, if we can say so. There was a person, a communal worker, who worked before the war in Bucha. He stayed in the city and actually asked the occupiers to allow him to take away the people’s bodies from the streets” said ndriy Nebytov, head of Kyiv’s regional police force.
“He buried them in two graves. The first was for 40 dead people, the second for 57 dead people. There were 40 bodies already retrieved from the grave. I want to point out that among them was one of our policemen, a criminal investigation officer, who unfortunately was also shot with a small weapon.”
