Past year ‘most horrific’ for many Kyiv residents — Zelensky
Ukraine’s president said on Thursday that the past year had been “the most horrific” in the lives of many residents of the Kyiv region, where Russian troops are accused of committing war crimes before withdrawing a year ago.
The Ukrainian military recaptured the small towns of Irpin and Bucha outside the capital, Kyiv, in late March 2022.
International investigators are now collecting evidence in Irpin, Bucha and other places where Ukraine says Russian troops committed large-scale atrocities. The Russian government denies the allegations.
“For many residents of the Kyiv region, the past year has become the most horrific in their entire lives,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in English on the Telegram messaging app. “And the liberation of the region has become a symbol of the fact that Ukraine will be able to win this war. Events that could not be imagined in the 21st century have become a reality in the satellite cities of Kyiv — Bucha and Irpin. Russian troops marched on the Ukrainian capital from the north and brought death and destruction.”
Zelensky wrote his Telegram post under video footage showing heavily damaged buildings and vehicles that had been destroyed in Bucha and Irpin.
The video included interviews with survivors recalling their experiences during the occupation, and footage of corpses lined up on the ground in black body bags.
The producers of the video, which was compiled by the Ukrainian fundraising initiative UNITED24, put the civilian death toll in areas of the Kyiv region liberated from Russian forces at 1,137, including 461 killed in Bucha alone.
The Russian forces that invaded Ukraine on February 24 2022 were halted outside the capital and later pulled back.
But the Kyiv region is still often the target of missile and drone strikes as battles rage elsewhere.