Bucha, a town scarred by war and violence

Bucha, Ukraine, Apr 5 (EFE).- A row of burnt tanks is lined up at the entrance of Bucha, a town near Kyiv that has become the symbol of the Russian defeat, but also of the alleged atrocities carried out by Russian troops after hundreds of civilians were found in mass graves.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian emergency services recovered six new bodies from a courtyard in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.

The victims have not been identified yet but they are the bodies of a child, three women and two men.

“After analyzing the bodies we think the civilians were killed and then burnt. At least two have bullet shots in the back of their heads. These are the kind of crimes the Russians are committing as they pass through Kyiv,” Kyiv region police chief, Andrii Nebytov, told Efe.

Since Bucha was liberated from Russian troops over the weekend, some 200 civilians have been found dead, some handcuffed and with bullet shots in the back of the head, others wearing white pieces of cloth, an indication that they were unarmed.

The dozens of bodies left on the streets have been removed but some are still torn to pieces on the ground.

There is not a soul on the streets of Bucha, the few remaining residents are scared, still digesting the trauma of what they lived through during the Russian occupation.

Near the supermarket destroyed by Russian missiles, dozens of people, most of them elderly, are waiting to receive humanitarian aid.

They are starving, many have spent days or weeks hiding in basements.

“I have nothing left. My son was killed and I have been left alone, without a home or family,” Ana, 80, anguished about the future that this ghost town holds for her, says.

Tatiana Sergueina says her neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings was filled with Russian snipers.

“They killed my neighbor right under my nose,” she says, still in shock. “Luckily my house is almost intact, only the windows were broken,” she adds.

Bucha is scarred with traces of a military tank that swept through the garden of a house, burnt cars, clothes, pillows, shoes and tables scattered on the ground.

These are wounds that will take a long time to heal.

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops, more than 410 bodies have been removed from various localities across the Kyiv region, including Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel and Vorzel, according to Ukrainian authorities.

“We will continue investigating the area to gather evidence to prove Russia has committed war crimes, and even crimes against humanity,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, told Efe.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin is the greatest war criminal of the 21st century,” she added.

Before the war, Bucha was a residential town on the outskirts of Kyiv where many families sought the comfort of living close to the capital as well as nature.

It was where children from all over the province came for summer camps.

But today, it has become a symbol of violence and injustice. EFE