Harrowing photos have emerged of a woman crying and breaking down in grief after the body of her husband, who was murdered by Russian soldiers, was exhumed from a shallow grave near their home.
The grieving widow was seen next to her husband’s body lying on a blue sheet on the ground in the village of Andriivka near Kyiv on Monday.
The woman, who has not been identified, was seen crying as she was held by Ukrainian police officers in the village where 40 people were killed by Russian soldiers.
Her husband, who was murdered by Russian soldiers before they were driven out by Ukrainian forces, was pictured lifeless – still wearing his jeans and striped top.
Harrowing photos have emerged of a woman crying and breaking down in grief after the body of her husband, who was murdered by Russian soldiers, was exhumed from a shallow grave near their home
The grieving widow was seen next to her husband’s body lying on a blue sheet on the ground in the village of Andriivka near Kyiv on Monday
The woman, who has not been identified, was seen crying as she was held by Ukrainian police officers in the village where 40 people were killed by Russian soldiers
A community worker exhumes the body of the man buried near his home in the village of Andriivka on Monday
The heartbroken woman is among dozens of civilians in Andriivka who have lost loved ones to Russian troops.
Among them are the family of 23-year-old Anton Ischenko, who was so severely murdered and mutilated by Vladimir Putin’s men that his loved ones were forced to identify his body by his clothing.
“He was a very nice boy, very smart – he recited poetry,” Anton’s grandmother Tetiana told the BBC.
“Maybe he would have brought her back in one piece if he had fought somewhere else,” Tetiana said, tears streaming down her face.
“When my husband said to the Russians: ‘Take me instead’, they pointed a machine gun at him and said: ‘Go home – or we’ll take you both with us’.”
Tetiana, who has only now been able to bury her grandson, added: “We wanted to bury him separately and with a priest, not just in a mass grave,” she says. “I had two daughters, so he was our boy. We only had one boy.”
The heartbroken woman is among dozens of civilians in Andriivka who have lost loved ones to Russian troops
Municipal workers on Monday exhume the body of a killed civilian buried in the yard of his home in Andriivka
Residents of Andriivka village saw bloody fighting and destroyed their houses and buildings. After Russian troops withdraw to refocus their efforts on eastern Ukraine, some civilians are returning or emerging from bomb shelters.
Grigory Klymenko, who stayed in the village to be with his bedridden 90-year-old mother, said the Russians were “animals”.
“People don’t behave like that. My parents told me about the war and the fascists didn’t even do anything like that.’
Next door, the house of Leonid Koval and his son was destroyed by Russian troops. “I don’t know what they were looking for,” he said as he burst into tears. “They just destroyed everything. I have no words to describe what they did.’
Ukrainian and Western leaders have accused Russian forces of committing atrocities against civilians in devastated areas around Kyiv under Russian occupation, including the city of Bucha.
Municipal workers exhume the body of a man buried near his home in the village of Andriivka
Ukrainian authorities say over 1,200 bodies have been found in the area so far and they are weighing cases against “500 suspects” including Putin and other senior Russian officials.
In Bucha, work to exhume bodies from a mass grave in a churchyard resumed Monday after more than 400 dead civilians were discovered. The majority had been shot.
Galyna Feoktistova waited for hours in the cold and rain hoping to identify her 50-year-old son, who was shot more than a month ago, but finally went home to get some warmth. “He’s still there,” said her surviving son Andriy.
In Buzova, a village in the Kyiv region, Ukrainian officials said the bodies of 50 people, all shot at point blank range, were discovered on a street. Another mass grave containing dozens of bodies was also found in the village.
Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka municipality, which includes Buzova and several other surrounding villages, told Ukrainian television that some of the bodies were found in a ditch near a gas station. The number of dead has not yet been confirmed.
“Now we’re coming back to life, but during the occupation we had our ‘hotspots’, many civilians died,” Didych said.
The bodies of 132 civilians were also found shot to death over the weekend in Makariv, a town in Kyiv Oblast and about 30 miles west of the capital. All died from gunshot wounds, the city’s mayor said.
About 40 percent of the city was reportedly destroyed after Ukrainian forces recaptured it from Russian occupation on March 22. Since then, officials have been counting the dead.
Similar scenes were found in the nearby town of Bucha, where more than 400 dead civilians were discovered. The majority had also been shot.
The mass killing of civilians in Ukraine has been widely condemned in the West as war crimes scenes in Bucha were pictured with piles of bodies bearing traces of torture and execution after the city was recaptured by Ukrainian forces.
But officials have now revealed that even greater damage was caused by Putin’s thugs in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv and about 15 miles from Bucha.
Russian forces are now concentrating on the Donbass region in the east, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian troops are preparing “even larger operations”.
Russia is believed to be seeking a link between occupied Crimea and the Moscow-backed Donetsk and Lugansk separatist regions in the Donbass.