Scenes of devastation, people missing and presumed dead, tales of torture: reports from this small town of around 13,000 people, among the first to be occupied by the Russian invader and located on a key access road to the capital, cause consternation.
If the city has not yet located and counted all its dead, the journalists who had access to the city report considerable damage caused by the Russian bombardments.
In the war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine, few places have suffered as much as Borodyanka
says for example the American network CNN.
Two videos that the network says it has geotagged show a total destruction […] comparable only to that of the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol
. Whole blocks of the village are reduced to rubble
reports the channel.
Collapsed apartment buildings, floors crashing like an accordion at ground level
: The scars left behind are shocking
relates for its part the New York Times.
The destruction is there, as far as the eye can see
summarizes for its part theAFPwhich mentions a city gutted
and unrecognizable
. The news agency describes gutted buildings having spilled their contents onto the streets – here a fridge, there a rug or children’s toys strewn about too many to count
as stray cats meow among the rubble.
The three priorities, interim mayor Georgii Yerko said on Tuesday, quoted by the New York Timeswill be to restore electricity, of which the population has been deprived for weeks, to remove the ammunition which did not explode, then to clear the rubble.
A situation perhaps “worse” than in Boutcha
Given the extent of the destruction, clearing the rubble will necessarily involve extricating civilians, likely numerous, from the bowels of the collapsed buildings.
Reports already indicate that the number of victims of the occupiers could be even higher in Borodyanka and other liberated towns
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video message on Monday.
The same day, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Iryna Venediktova, also announced on television, without giving details, that the civilian losses could be considerable.
« In fact, the worst civilian casualty situation is in Borodyanka. I think we will talk about Borodianka separately. »
people”,”text”:”We think more than 200people”}}”>We believe that more than 200 people
holed up in basements or their apartments in the hope of protecting themselves from Russian bombardments, are dead
Mayor Yerko said on Tuesday.
This is without counting the victims likely to have been killed other than by Russian air strikes, as the events that occurred in Boutcha suggest.
In less than an hour, CNN reports, those collecting the bodies found the bodies of a shot cyclist, a charred individual to the point of being unrecognizable
and a driver shot in the head and chest.
He appeared to be carrying medical supplies, now scattered near the road where he was found, the network said.
Torture allegations
A couple who had just returned to their home also brought the CNN team to their yard to show them the body of a man, bound hand and foot, his body with bruises.
The couple further claim to have found their house ransacked and littered with bottles of alcohol and crushed cigarette butts on the table. A testimony that echoes a BBC report on other towns in the region, broadcast a few days ago. The Russian military seemed to have feasted
then reported the journalist of the British public broadcaster.
In addition, a journalist from the British newspaper The Guardianwho also went to Borodyanka, for his part interviewed a man who claims to have been taken prisoner and tortured for three days and as many nights.
The man, who says he was arrested for violating curfew, has, according to his testimony, been beaten [et] forced to kneel in what he was told was his grave
. His Russian and Chechen captors, who accused him of being a nazi
would have moreover, among other things, fired bullets in the direction of his head and his feet to frighten him.
Saying that other prisoners were missing, the Ukrainian interviewee reported a conversation that the soldiers allegedly had:
« You brought in prisoners again? […] I’m tired of burying them. »
During a speech denouncing the paralysis of the Security Council of theHIM-HER-IT In the face of a war that violates his charter, President Zelensky described in stark terms the Russian offensive earlier today.
People thrown into a well, beheaded or shot at close range, women raped in front of their children
: The most horrific crimes since World War II have been perpetrated in our country
he thundered, saying he was speaking on behalf of the victims of this deadly conflict, in particular those of Boutcha.
After the reports on this city, Western countries demanded investigations into the “war crimes” allegedly committed by the Russian army.
Russia continues to deny that its bombings target civilians.
She further qualified as staging
the images showing the corpses scattered in the streets of Boutcha, shouting at Ukrainian propaganda. Satellite images published by the American company Maxar Technologies and analyzed by certain media, however, refute his version of events.
