Ukrainian officials on Thursday claimed to have found two mass graves containing civilian bodies in a village in the Bucha region, where Russian forces allegedly killed hundreds.
In the first grave, the teenage girl’s body was placed next to the bodies of two 35-year-old Ukrainian soldiers. In the second, law enforcement officers found the bodies of six people—four men and two women, with four identified as local residents.
The burial sites were inspected by Kyiv Region Police Chief Andriy Nebytov, forensic scientists, and investigators.
Nebytov said there were indications that some of the victims had been tortured.
“These people were killed by the aggressors, and there are signs of torture on some of the victims. I want to emphasize that these people were civilians,” he said.
Nebytov added, “Russian military personnel deliberately shot dead civilians who offered no resistance and posed no threat.”
The Epoch Times has been unable to independently verify the claims.
The bodies of all the victims were taken to morgues in the Kyiv region for further examination, police said, adding that the identified bodies will later be handed over to relatives for burial.
Kyiv Region Police said it will “continue to investigate the horrific crimes of the occupiers.”
It comes less than two weeks after Bucha’s mayor said that officials identified 163 residents allegedly killed by Russian forces—roughly half of the total figure that Ukrainian officials say were found dead.
“These are residents of our town who were cynically killed, brutally tortured by the Russians. We know their last names, first names, patronymics [father’s names], where they lived, and who they were—fathers, sons, wives, in one family or another,” Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk told the Voice of America in an interview published on April 8.
The mayor said 320 people were killed in Bucha.
“Every day we find more and more bodies of the dead, in different parts of our city—in vegetable gardens, in park areas, in playgrounds,” the mayor said at the time.
The Kremlin has denied all accusations that it committed atrocities in Bucha, and has accused Ukraine of staging the killings as part of an effort to justify further sanctions against Russia.
The Epoch Times has contacted Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.
