A member of a mining crew works during an excavation in a mass grave near Bucha, on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, June 13, 2022. The lush beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasts with the violent deaths of newly discovered victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the city of Bucha on the outskirts of Kiev. The hands of many victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of excavating the remains coincided with a report by the Ukrainian police chief that authorities had opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Workers wearing white uniforms and masks used shovels to dig up corpses from the forest floor, marking each section with small yellow numbered plates on the ground. The bodies, covered with cloth and soil, attracted flies. “The shootings on our knees tell us that people were tortured,” Andriy Nebitov, head of the Kiev regional police, said at the scene. “Hands tied behind their backs with tape say that the people were held (hostage) for a long time and (enemy forces) tried to get any information from them.” Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the area in late March, authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere. Bucha’s horror shocked the world after the withdrawal of Russian troops. The mass grave that reporters saw on Monday was located just behind a ditch dug for a military vehicle. The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and head, Nebitov said. National Police Chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Monday that the criminal investigation into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings were also carried out by snipers firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers. Bodies were found on the streets and in their homes, as well as in mass graves. He did not specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilians and how many were military. Full information on the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere is not known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the American Jewish Commission on Sunday. He reported the killings of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol by Russian bombing. Zelensky, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked: “Why is this happening in 2022? “It’s not the 1940s. How could the mass killings, the torture, the burning cities and the filter camps set up by the Russian army in the occupied territories look like Nazi concentration camps?”
