Additional alleged Russian atrocities appeared in Ukraine on April 6 when the head of the military administration of Hostomel to the northwest of Kyiv said more than 400 people are still missing.
Speaking to Ukraine-based Hromakdse Radio, Taras Dumenko said that after 35 days of Russian occupation in the town of 17,500 residents, their bodies cannot be found and that some people were arrested by Russians and no one has been seen ever since.
The local official said that many of the town’s residents who’ve been identified as missing or killed have yet to be found and that some bodies were found in Bucha, where Russians are suspected of killing of 300 civilians.
About 3.5 kilometers separate the two towns and Hostomel was hotly contested in the first week of Russia’s renewed invasion for having a strategic airfield.
Dumenko said that invading Russian troops had also killed the township head, Yuriy Prylypko as well as local volunteers Ruslan Karpenko and Ivan Zorya, whose bodies were found.
The disclosure of missing residents echoes other atrocities Ukrainian are discovering as they enter liberated settlements in the Kyiv region. Over the weekend, at least 300 civilians were found killed execution style, some of whom children, and many blindfolded with their hands bound behind their backs.
On April 5, President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United Nations’ Security Council via video link calling on the intergovernmental body to hold Russia accountable for war crimes.
Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, Iryna Venediktova, has said that Borodyanka, another northwestern liberated town from Kyiv, has the most civilian deaths caused by invading Russian troops.
She didn’t specify how many victims there are, but the New York Times reported on April 6 that up to 200 people are missing in the town and are presumed dead.
“We think over 200 people died [from Russia bombardment],” said Heorhii Yerko, the acting mayor Borodyanka. “But it is an assumption.”
The Kyiv satellite town was one of the first sites to be hit by Russian shelling when Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin ordered a renewed, multi-pronged invasion of the neighboring country on Feb. 24. It’s part of a war that Putin has waged against the country since orders were given to seize Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and occupy parts of the easternmost regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in 2014.
Scenes in the liberated cities of Kyiv region also show evidence of indiscriminate Russian bombing.
Before the renewed invasion, Borodyanka had a population of roughly 13,000 residents. Russian forces first entered the town on Feb. 27, local residents told The New York Times.
