Bucha - A city destroyed and rebuilding
Tova in Ukraine
Tova in Ukraine

Bucha - A city destroyed and rebuilding

The civilian killings at Bucha have become a symbol of brutality of the war in Ukraine. 

They were carried out as Russia launched a failed attempt to capture the Ukrainian capital, after it invaded the country on February 24.

Officials have now reached what may be the closest they will get to a final count of victims. 

Municipal authorities say 458 bodies have been found in the Bucha area.

Of which, 419 bore markings of having been shot, tortured or bludgeoned to death.

366 of the bodies were male and 86 were female, while five had deteriorated too badly to determine. 

Nine were children aged under 18.

The town’s deputy mayor Mykhailyna Skoryk-Shkarivska said the final figure also includes one bag of body parts. 

The remains were too fragmented, decomposed or badly mutilated to be identified, but apparently belonged to multiple people, Skoryk-Shkarivska said. 

Bucha - A city destroyed and rebuilding
The civilian killings at Bucha have become a symbol of brutality of the war in Ukraine
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The stark numbers only hint at the horrors inflicted on the small number of people who remained behind after the Russians swept into the Kyiv suburb.

Most of the town’s estimated 39,000 people escaped before the Russians arrived, but some 4,000 remained – 1 in 10 of whom died in just over a month.

Authorities have spent more than four months to account for 32 days’ worth of killing.

Identifying all of the bodies has proved impossible, underscoring the horrific circumstances officials encountered when the Russian troops left. 

Skoryk-Shkarivska said the effort to identify these victims will continue, while prosecutors are working to identify the perpetrators and ultimately try them for war crimes. 

The world has reacted to the horrors in Bucha with outrage. 

The grisly images led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin and highlighted the brutal atrocities of war.

Listen to the full interview with Ukraine’s President Zelensky next Wednesday 17th August on Tova, 6:30am-9am on Today FM.

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