Free Republic

As many as 9,000 Ukraine civilians could have been executed by Russian forces and buried in mass graves outside Mariupol, according to local leaders. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko revealed the grim development Thursday and called the site of the atrocities in the nearby village of Manhush “the new Babi Yar,” a reference to the Ukrainian Holocaust site where tens of thousands of Jews were killed in World War II. “Then Hitler killed Jews, Roma and Slavs. And now Putin is destroying Ukrainians. He has already killed tens of thousands of civilians in Mariupol,” ....Meanwhile, Russia continued to shell humanitarian corridors...

Pavlyuk, 53, was a surviving resident of besieged Ukrainian town where gruesome evidence of killings and torture has come to light following withdrawal of Russian forces. He told when Russian troops came they killed all the men who were younger than 50, including two of Pavlyuk's friends. Pavlyuk was given 20 minutes to bury them. He showed shallow graves he hastily dug, each marked with a plank of wood topped with a religious icon. He wanted to give whatever dignity he could. "But it's too shallow," Pavlyuk said. "I just wanted to protect them from the dogs." Pavlyuk and other...

Ukrainian President Zelenskiy said the situation in Borodianka was "significantly more dreadful" than nearby Bucha, where Russian forces' killing of civilians has been broadly condemned. In Borodianka, 60 km (37 miles) northwest of Kyiv, families looking for relatives watched diggers search through rubble of an apartment. The building was charred the middle section razed to the ground leaving a gaping hole. "My mother, my brother, brother’s wife, his mother and father-in-law, are still there, as well as other people who were in the basement," said resident Vadym Zagrebelnyi. "But there were other people on the upper floors with children. I...