Six weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, civilians in cities like Bucha, Borodyanka, and Trostianets have provided harrowing testimonies describing torture and sexual violence committed against them by Russian troops.
The alleged atrocities committed by Russian troops against Ukrainian civilians were brought to light by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who challenged the UN to "act immediately" or "dissolve yourself altogether", in the aftermath of the Bucha massacre.
"What Russian military did in Bucha is cruelty. The UN Charter has been violated literally. The massacre in Bucha is only one of many examples," the president asserted.
Even India, which has by and large remained neutral so far with respect to the war, condemned the alleged killing of civilians in Bucha (albeit, without taking pointing fingers at the Kremlin) and called for an independent investigation into the "deeply disturbing" matter.
We look at some of the testimonies that have been reported by media outlets, describing the actions of Russian troops that clearly violate the humans rights of Ukrainian civilians.
Bucha
Satellite images of the Ukrainian town of Bucha show an approximately 45-foot-long (14-metre-long) trench dug into the grounds of a church where a mass grave has been identified, a private US company, Maxar Technologies, stated on 5 April.
It was in response to these images that President Zelenskyy had said, "these are war crimes and will be recognised by the world as genocide."
"I recognised him by his sneakers, his trousers. He looked mutilated, his body was cold," testified Bucha resident Tetyana Volodymyrivna to reporters while describing her husband, according to an NBC News report.
Speaking in the streets of Bucha a few days after Russian troops had pulled back, Tetyana, fighting back tears, said that her husband's face was mutilated and that he had been shot in the head.
"His face was mutilated, his body was cold. He had been shot in the head, tortured, mutilated. He was buried a meter deep, so that the dogs won't eat his body. That was it," she said.
Ukrainian forces have identified Lieutenant colonel Azatbek Omurbekov, who heads the 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade that occupied Bucha, as the man who allegedly oversaw the shooting of men and the raping of women and children.
He is now being referred to as the "Butcher of Bucha", according to multiple news reports including one published by The Daily Mail.
Francesca Mannocchi, an award-winning Italian journalist, described the streets of Bucha when she visited after the withdrawal of the Russian forces.
"Every house in Bucha has a white sign at the entrance. A rag, or a sheet of paper in children's handwriting. The letters read: civilians, children," she wrote in her report for La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper.
None of those signs seemed to have pacified the Russian troops, given the latest reports of more than 400 corpses being recovered from the city.
Additionally, Anatoliy Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, stated that he had personally counted 21 people who were shot by Russian troops, describing their deaths as an "abuse of civilians," Reuters reported.
Borodyanka
Ukraine’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova had stated earlier this week that the situation in Borodyanka was worse than that of Bucha.
"In fact, the worst situation with civilian victims is in Borodyanka. I think we will speak of Borodyanka separately", she had said.
One Ukrainian man has described three days of horror while he was captured in Borodyanka.
Forty-five-year-old Petro Titenko told The Guardian that Chechen soldiers picked him up for breaking curfew, beat him, and forced him to kneel towards what he was told was his grave.
Bullets were then shot at his head and feet, in mock execution style.
"I was beaten for 15-20 minutes. Then a machine gun was fired over my head, shot at my feet. All this time I prayed to God to save my life", he said.
Titenko was only fed a small bowl of porridge during his captivity and was driven to a place, blindfolded, where other prisoners of Russian troops were present.
"You are Bandera, you are Nazis," they shouted to Titenko and the the prisoners.
Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian ultranationalist and Nazi-collaborator, who was also the ideological theorist of the militant wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists.
Titenko also said that he was stripped to his underwear because the Russians were looking for Ukrainian tattoos on his body. "If we find them, we will cut them together with the skin," one soldier said, according to Titenko.
Finally, one morning, he along with other prisoners was dropped of at the village of Ozera, which is approximately 20 miles from his home. Titenko then walked back to his family, consistently braving Russian checkpoints on the way.
Trostianets
During their visit to Trostianets, reporters for The Guardian found evidence of "summary executions, torture and systematic looting during the month of occupation".
Over the weekend, while residents were collecting food parcels, they spotted the reporters and ran to them to narrate tales of horror.
"They smashed my place up." "They stole everything, even my underwear.” "They killed a guy on my street." "The f*****s stole my laptop and my aftershave," were some of the things they said.
Stories of the sadism of Russian troops were also told.
A woman named Sasina, her husband, and her father were on their way to deliver bread to a 96-year-old great aunt, when a group of Russian troops reportedly threatened them at gunpoint.
"There were 20 of them, and they started shouting: 'Run, bitches!' We ran through the mud as fast as we could, our legs were freezing and soaked and we were terrified. They started shooting in the air. We could hear them laughing, they thought it was hilarious," Sasina told The Guardian.
Some got to know about the deaths of their loved ones via police reports.
Ludmyla Savchenko, for instance, had to read a stamped death report drafted by the police that explained how her husband had been "brutally tortured and then killed with a shot to the heart and one to the head".
(With inputs from The Guardian, NBC News, Reuters, and The Daily Mail.)
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