1,020 civilian bodies in Kyiv morgues: Ukrainian official

The bodies of more than 1,000 civilians are being saved in morgues in the Kyiv area after Russian troops withdrew from areas around the capital, a senior Ukrainian respectable told AFP Thursday.

“1,020 bodies (of) civilians, best civilians, in the areas of all of the Kyiv vicinity,” had been discovered, Olga Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, informed AFP in Borodyanka.

“These are most effective civilians accumulated from buildings, however also at the streets,” she stated, specifying that the date of the deaths to the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in  past due February.

Her comments came after police in the Kyiv region said they had discovered the remains of nine civilians in Borodyanka, some 54 kilometers (34 miles) from the capital, buried in communal graves.

Oleksandr Pavliuk, the Kyiv regional governor, said the dead were “either killed or tortured to death during the hostilities.”

“Forensic experts are now examining the bodies, but what we saw was hands tied behind the back, their legs tied and shot through the limbs, and in the back of the head,” he added.

The pullback of Russian forces from cities and villages around Kyiv left a path of civilian deaths, starting with discoveries in Bucha, that have led Ukrainian officers to accuse Russia of genocide.

At the start of April, prosecutor popular Iryna Venediktova advised journalists that Ukraine had recovered 410 civilian bodies from regions it retook from the Russian navy in the wider Kyiv place.