Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech on Friday that the situation in the town of Borodyanka was “much worse” than in the Kiev suburb of Bucha, where over 300 people were tortured and killed.
Driving the news: Zelenskyy said there were “even more victims” in Borodyanka, about 24 kilometers from Bucha.
- Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said authorities in the Kyiv region – which includes Bucha and Borodyanka – found “650 bodies” and of those “40 bodies” were children, according to Reuters.
Catch up fast: Ukraine’s president said earlier this week that he believes the death toll in Borodyanka and other cities Ukraine recently recaptured from Russian forces “could be even higher” than that in Bucha.
What he says: “[S]So far, the Russian state and military are the greatest threat to freedom, human security and the concept of human rights as such on the planet. It’s obvious after Bucha,” said Selenskyj.
- “And work on dismantling the rubble in Borodyanka began. It’s much worse there,” added Zelenskyy. “More victims of the Russian occupiers.”
- Zelenskyy said the attacks on the Kyiv region had led to “mass killings of civilians,” adding that he knew Russian authorities were already working to “stag a false campaign to disguise their guilt in the mass killings.”
- “I want to say right away: every normal person in the world understands who brought war and mass deaths to the Ukrainian land. There is a lot of evidence that it is Russian troops who are destroying peaceful cities, kidnapping, torturing, killing civilians.”
Between the lines: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday, “We have seen atrocities, we have seen war crimes, we have yet to see a genocidal level of systematic killing of the Ukrainian people.”
- President Biden has said Russian President Vladimir Putin should face a war crimes trial over the reported atrocities in Bucha.
go deeper: Dead civilians in the streets of Bucha near Kyiv after the retreat of Russian troops