Mass grave of tortured men found in Bucha, Ukraine

Another mass grave was found in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, the scene of alleged mass killings of civilians, before it was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in early March, the head of the Kiev regional police said yesterday.

On April 29, a pit with the bodies of three men was found in the Bucha district,” regional police chief Andriy Nebytov wrote on Facebook.

“The victims were tortured for a long time. Gunshot wounds were found on the extremities of their bodies. In the end, each of the men was shot through the ear. This is another mass burial of the occupiers in the Bucha district, the long-suffering district where more than a thousand civilians were killed and tortured,” said Mr. Nebytov.

According to Mr. Nebytov’s post, the burial ground was found in the forest near the village of Myrotske, 10 km northwest of the city of Bucha. Mr Nebytov said the three bodies would be sent for a forensic examination after a preliminary inspection by the Kyiv regional police.

Last week, UkraineThe prosecutor of 10 identified RussiaShe accused soldiers of atrocities in Bucha, one of the main flashpoints of the war that helped bolster Western support for Ukraine.

Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said on Facebook that the 10 soldiers of the 64th Separate Motorized Ground Forces Brigade of Russia who occupied Bucha “are involved in the torture of peaceful people”. She did not specifically say her office had filed criminal charges and appealed to the public to help develop evidence.

The 10 suspects included officers as high as a general and privates. The Russian government denies attacking civilians. Russian President Wladimir Putin recently paid tribute to the brigade’s work, and Ms. Venediktova said that, as its commander-in-chief, he bears responsibility for the soldiers’ actions.

“During the occupation of Bucha, they took unarmed civilians hostage, killed them with hunger and thirst, held them on their knees with their hands tied and their eyes taped, mocked and beat them,” Ms. Venediktova said. She added that the Russian soldiers threatened to shoot the hostages and ransacked houses.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a thorough investigation into alleged war crimes during his visit to Bucha on Thursday. Ukrainian authorities have said they are investigating thousands of possible war crimes, including the killing of civilians, the bombing of civilian infrastructure, torture, sex crimes and the use of prohibited weapons.

According to the Russian foreign minister, Moscow has evacuated over a million people from Ukraine since the start of the war.

Yesterday’s comments from Sergei Lavrov in an interview with Chinese state news agency Xinhua come as Ukraine has accused Moscow of forcibly sending Ukrainians out of the country. Lavrov said that number included more than 300 Chinese civilians, but offered no evidence in the interview to support his claim.

Meanwhile, seven Ukrainian soldiers and seven civilians were reportedly released yesterday in a prisoner swap with Russia, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on social media.

“We are bringing home 14 of our people: seven military personnel and seven civilians,” Ms. Vereshchuk wrote on Facebook and Telegram. “For me, this exchange is something special: one of the soldiers is five months pregnant.”

As of yesterday afternoon, the exchange had not yet been confirmed by official Russian sources.