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...

Nice work here by Meduza to corroborate the satellite imagery published by the New York Times a few days ago. Russia claims that the now-famous scene of corpses lying out in the open on Yablonska Street in Bucha is Ukraine’s handiwork, a false-flag murder spree by Ukrainian forces after the Russians withdrew on March 30. Not so. Many of those bodies were there and visible from the sky before March 30. The Times used satellite footage but Meduza got hold of drone footage from late March. (snip) Now that Bucha’s survivors are free to speak to reporters, stories are emerging...

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...

Ukrainian activists claim to have identified the so-called “Butcher of Bucha,” a decorated Russian commander leading the unit that massacred hundreds of civilians in what is being widely condemned as genocide. Lt. Col. Azatbek Omurbekov, thought to be around 40, was first identified by InformNapalm, a Ukrainian volunteer group that monitors Russia’s military and special services. It shared his home address as well as email and telephone number, calling him the “military villain” behind the massacre in Bucha, the suburb of Kyiv where bodies have been left strewn in the street or thrown into mass graves. The group IDed Omurbekov...

Satellite photographs released on Monday appear to rebut Russian assertions that dead bodies in civilian clothing found in Bucha had appeared there after Russian forces retreated from the devastated Ukrainian town. Mid-March satellite imagery of a Bucha street appears to show several bodies of civilians lying dead in or just off the roadway where Ukrainian officials recently said they found multiple corpses after Russian troops withdrew. "High-resolution Maxar satellite imagery collected over Bucha, Ukraine (northwest of Kyiv) verifies and corroborates recent social media videos and photos that reveal bodies lying in the streets and left out in the open for...

She finished her university education and became an engineer, got married and had a son. Later she divorced and remarried in her 40s to Valerii Verbitski, whom she described as a "good man." Her life was simple and peaceful. That peace lasted until February 24, when Russian forces launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine, barreling through her city, shelling neighborhoods, blowing up a government building, and encircling Kharkiv's estimated 1.4 million residents. "There was no water or power, we couldn't buy food. It became impossible to live," she said, "The air raid sirens never stopped, there was explosion after explosion....

**WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT** Mass graves uncovered in Bucha, city to the west of Kyiv which Russian forces retreated from at the weekend One containing the bodies of at least 57 civilians was uncovered in the ground of a church in the city centre Satellite images reveal pit was dug some time before March 31, as Putin's men were still in control of the area Officials say the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in total, with many strewn through the streets One grave contained the bodies of a mayoress and her family who were killed for...

A VILLAGE mayor in Ukraine was kidnapped, executed and dumped in a forest pit along with her husband and son, reports claim. Neighbours said Russian troops occupying Motyzhyn, 30 miles west of Kyiv, tried to win the support of local officials and butchered them when they refused to collaborate. The horrors emerged after Putin's forces retreated from the Kyiv region back towards Belarus. The mayor Olga Sukhenko, her husband Igor and son Alexander were reportedly kidnapped on March 23. Their fate was unknown until their bodies were found on Saturday in a shallow grave behind houses that Russian soldiers had...

Evidence of Russian War Crimes are now surfacing over the lands that the Ukrainians have won back. Mass graves have been found, people dead in the streets and basements of buildings. There have been reports of children being tortured and parents killed in front of their children. The stories that are now being told are of the worst kind imaginable, and the Russians will pay for what they have done.

President Joe Biden said Monday that evidence needs to be gathered to put Russian leader Vladimir Putin on trial for war crimes related to his nation’s invasion of Ukraine. “He is a war criminal,” Biden said of Putin, on the heels of reports of mass killings of civilians by Russian troops in the town of Bucha, northwest of Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv. “This guy is brutal,” Biden said. “He should be held accountable.”

Biden says killings in Bucha are "outrageous," calls for war crimes trial against Putin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the mothers of Russian soldiers in an emotional Sunday night speech — saying he wants them to see the carnage their sons have caused after hundreds of executed civilians were discovered in a mass grave in a Kyiv suburb. “I want every mother of every Russian soldier to see the bodies of the killed people in Bucha, in Irpin, in Hostomel. What did they do? Why were they killed?” Zelensky asked in his nightly address on Sunday.

President Biden said Monday that Russian President Vladimir Putin should face trial for war crimes after horrifying images emerged over the weekend of the aftermath of civilian massacres carried out by Kremlin forces in Ukraine. “You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal,” Biden told reporters as he arrived back in Washington after spending the weekend in Delaware. “Well, the truth of the matter, you saw what happened in Bucha. This warrants — he is a war criminal.”