The bodies of three men with their hands tied and blindfolded, visibly tortured and shot dead, were found in a mass grave near the Ukrainian city of Bucha on Friday, Kiev police said on Saturday.
“The victims were tortured for a long time… In the end, each one was shot in the temple,” Kiev police chief Andriy Nebytov said in a statement.
They were handcuffed, blindfolded and gags put in their mouths.
The bodies of the three men were found in Myrotske, a town near Bucha, a town in the Kyiv region that has become a symbol of the atrocities of war in Ukraine and where the bodies of many civilians were also found.
“According to preliminary information, the occupiers tried to hide evidence of their abuse, throwing the bodies into a ditch and covering it with earth,” Nebytov said.
Ukrainian authorities found dozens of bodies in civilian clothes in areas occupied by the Russian army and later abandoned on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Ukraine accuses Russian troops of massacres, which the Russian government denies.
This week, the Ukrainian judiciary launched an investigation into 10 soldiers accused of alleged crimes in Bucha.