Many harsh testimonies were circulated on social media about the harsh scenes revealed after the withdrawal of Russian soldiers. “People are dying all over the region of the capital Kyiv – in the streets, in cars, in the yards,” wrote Ukrainian journalist Anastasia Lapatina. “The big brother graves are already filled with unidentified bodies. Many families never knew what happened to their loved ones.”
Around the world the atrocities that have been exposed are already being called the “Bocha massacre”, and are calling on the leaders of Western countries to supply more and more weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. According to various testimonies, the Russian army ordered its soldiers to murder any man between the ages of 16 and 60 before withdrawing from the area. Not far from Bocha, on the side of the main road leading from the capital, the bodies of 5 naked women were found. According to most estimates, they were raped and murdered by the Russian soldiers.
The hundreds of bodies of civilians found are not the only thing left by the Russians before the withdrawal from Kiev. Already yesterday, Ukrainian President Zelensky warned that the Russians had left behind mines and many explosives around the cities. According to him, the Russians have placed many mines in houses and buildings – and the fear is of the great damage they will cause after the return of Ukrainian citizens to their homes. “The area remains unsafe,” he warned, saying emergency authorities were working to clear the mines. “Only then are citizens allowed to return to liberated areas.”
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksey Reznikov yesterday called Bocha the “new Srebrenica”, a memorial to the Bosnian city in which some 8,000 Muslims were killed in the Bosnian war in 1995. Moscow has denied allegations of war crimes and harming innocent civilians. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss announced tonight that they are working to gather evidence for the commission of war crimes by the Russian military in Ukraine.
In addition to the massive extermination of the civilian population, there are also increasing reports of large-scale looting by Russian soldiers in the area before their withdrawal. One of the reports claimed that Russian soldiers had opened a special market in Belarus, where “loot products” from the suburbs of Kyiv are sold. “Housewares, appliances including dishwashers, bicycles, rugs are just some of the goods that have been looted,” it was claimed. Another report alleges that many children’s toys and kitchen utensils were stolen.