Investigators attempting to uncover the extent of presumed Russian atrocities in the Ukrainian city of Bucha have reached what may be the closest they will come to a full understanding of the massacre.
Mykhailyna Skoryk-Shkarivska, the town’s deputy mayor, said at a Monday press conference that 458 civilians’ bodies had been tallied in the formerly occupied city. Of that total, 419 of them were either fatally shot, tortured, or bludgeoned to death, while 39 deaths were considered from natural causes, though those are still being investigated as possible war crimes, according to the Washington Post. Nine were children who were under the age of 18.
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366 of the bodies were male, and 86 were female, while a handful of corpses deteriorated beyond the point where sex could be determined, the deputy mayor added. Roughly 50 corpses have not been claimed by relatives and remain unidentified. Skoryk-Shkarivska said officials decided to announce their findings, even when a handful of bodies are still being uncovered, because they may never find and identify every body discovered.
Many of the bodies were found in mass graves.
Russian forces reached Bucha in late February, just days after launching their invasion into Ukraine. While they expected to march from Bucha right on to the capital of Kyiv, which is about 20 miles away, the Russians were stood up by Ukrainian resistance forces and forced to retreat 32 days later. When they left, Ukrainians had to pick up the pieces of the Russian destruction, which included documenting alleged war crimes on paper because the Russians had cut the internet.
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Bucha is considered the location of some of the worst alleged Russian war crimes, including the torture and killing of civilians, though it also suggests some horrific possibilities in other Russian-occupied territories within Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainians have died, while millions have fled or have been displaced during the first six months of the war, which Russia thought would last only a couple of weeks.
