Ukraine finds 410 civilian bodies in Kyiv region: prosecutor
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine has recovered 410 civilian bodies from areas it recently retook from the Russian army in the wider Kyiv region, its prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said Sunday.
Venediktova told national television: "410 bodies of dead civilians were evacuated out of the liberated territories of the Kyiv region. Forensic experts have already examined 140".
Ukraine, which retook control of the whole Kyiv region from the Russian army this weekend, has accused Moscow of a "deliberate massacre" in the town of Bucha, 30 kilometres (19 miles) north-west of the capital.
Bucha mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP on Saturday that 280 bodies were buried in mass graves.
Civilian bodies were also found in the street as Ukrainian forces regained access to the town.
On Saturday, AFP journalists saw at least 20 bodies in a single street in Bucha. One had his arms tied behind his back. All were wearing civilian clothing.
Local officials showed AFP a mass grave in the town on Sunday, where some of the bodies were still not under the earth, saying 57 people were buried there.
Russia has denied killing civilians, saying the accusations were "another production of the Kyiv regime and the Western media."
"During the time this settlement was under the control of Russian armed forces, not a single local resident suffered from any violent actions," Moscow's defence ministry said Sunday.
The Russian army occupied Bucha three days into its invasion, launched by President Vladimir Putin on February 24.
Ukraine has also accused Russia of killing civilians in the nearby town of Irpin, that has — like Bucha — suffered vast destruction.
Authorities said at least 200 people were killed in Irpin — which also fell to the Russian army in the first days of the war — since Moscow's launched its offensive.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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