After outrage over horrifying images of civilians being killed in the city of Bucha, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the situation in neighboring Borodyanka was even worse. Investigators said they found 26 bodies under the rubble in Borodyanka on Thursday.
Vadim Shandrenko is one of those who search for the remains of friends and family. His friend Volodymyr was at home in a now-collapsed apartment building when it was hit by Russian airstrikes. Shandrenko told CBS News the Russian soldiers would not search him.
Locals told CBS News the Russians also blew up a bridge as they retreated from the city.
In the nearby village of Termakhivka, locals told CBS News Russian soldiers looted everything from clothes and cutlery to refrigerators and washing machines.
Mykola Oleksienko, the village head, said the Russians ambushed the village clinic and left it in ruins.
Termakhivka is about 30 miles from the Chernobyl nuclear facility, where Russian troops have also withdrawn. Ukraine says the Russians dug trenches in one of the most contaminated parts of the exclusion zone, exposing themselves to significant doses of radiation in the process.
A Kremlin spokesman on Thursday admitted that Russia has lost a significant number of troops in Ukraine, calling it a “major tragedy” but did not say how many were killed.
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