After Russian soldiers stormed her home on March 10, Iryna Kostenko of Kyiv buried her son, Oleksei, 27, in their yard. She stated to BBC News: “The agony is unbearable. I’m now completely alone. My son, who was 27 at the time, was a young man. He only wanted to live. To keep the dogs away from the grave, I draped a blanket over it. I had to roll him in a carpet because he wasn’t in a coffin.

“They were in jeeps armed with machine guns. They assassinated him and escaped. I don’t know how I’m going to talk to such idiots. I don’t want them alive.

“This is my love. My sweetheart.”

One body looked to have been shot in the mouth and had his hands wrapped by white fabric.

“Civilians are subject to some rules of engagement in every battle.” “The Russians have shown that they were deliberately murdering people,” Fedoruk claimed.

“They virtually had the go-ahead from (Russian President Vladimir) Putin for a safari, and they were shooting Ukrainians.” Reuters, which was sent to the scene by Ukrainian officials, was unable to confirm the mayor’s claims right once.

When questioned about the bodies discovered in Bucha on Sunday, Russia’s defence ministry in Moscow did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in war crimes in Ukraine. It claims that its “special military operation” intends to undermine Ukrainian armed forces by attacking military sites rather than civilian regions.

When asked about separate war crimes charges on March 1, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call, “We unequivocally refute this.” He discounted claims of Russian strikes on civilian targets and the deployment of cluster and vacuum bombs as forgeries.

On March 21, Defense Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov stated that Russia’s action was carried out by competent and well-armed personnel, and he disputed Ukrainian assertions that Russian forces had attacked any civilian objects.