A week after Russian troops retreated, investigators and residents are still discovering hundreds of decomposing corpses, some of which had been dismembered, across the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, the Washington Post reported.
Last week, the small city gained international notoriety as the site of the Russian military’s most grisly atrocities in the invasion of Ukraine currently known. Ukrainian troops recaptured the city as Russian troops retreated from the region surrounding Kyiv, following a month-long occupation.
Early reports focused on mass graves, the apparent summary executions of civilians by Russian forces, and other grisly acts. Initial estimates last week placed the death toll at 280 people, with new indications that that number will rise drastically.
According to the Washington Post, the authorities are still, a week after Ukrainian troops pushed Russian troops from the area, “clearing Bucha of the hundreds of corpses decomposing on streets and in parks, apartment buildings and other locations.”
Washington Post reporters accompanied Ukrainian prosecutors across Bucha on Wednesday to a glass plant and other locations where Russian forces tortured, dismembered, and shot Ukrainians. The article notes that at least one corpse seen by the Post’s reporters had been “cleanly” decapitated, while “it appeared that someone has tried but failed to behead” another corpse found nearby.
One resident described to the Post the summary execution of a neighbor who had been detained by Russian soldiers while leaving the basement of a kindergarten serving as a shelter to walk his dog.
Photos accompanying the article depict the beheaded corpse and dozens of body bags gathered at Bucha’s overfilled city cemetery ahead of their burial there or transport to morgues in Kyiv, which have more capacity.