KYIV —
Grisly scenes from areas outside the Ukrainian capital suggest Russian troops carried out massacres as they retreated.
Near Kyiv in Motyzhyn, the bodies of the village’s mayor and her family lay in a shallow grave on Monday, untouched out of fear of traps.
“Over there in the hole lies my family,” a man told Reuters at the scene. “I don’t know why they were killed. They were peaceful, kind people.”
Even closer to Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy toured the carnage left behind in Bucha, where streets were strewn with bodies, some bound and apparently executed at close range.
“We know of thousands of people killed and tortured, with severed limbs, women raped, children murdered,” Zelenskyy told reporters on Monday. “This is a genocide.”
The horrifying images have intensified international outrage and calls for Russian President Vladimir Putin to face war crimes charges.
At the at the Antonxjmtzywov airport in Hostomel, the world’s largest plane sat destroyed and surrounded by ruins. Russia had sent paratroopers to the airport in the early hours of the invasion in an apparent bid to secure it as a launching pad to attack Kyiv, but were never able to use its runway.
“With liberation comes destitution in old age,” a man nearby told CTV National News Chief International Correspondent Paul Workman. “All I’ve got left is what I’m wearing and my bike.”
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Natalya, whose husband and nephew were killed by Russian forces, cries in her garden in Bucha, Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
