Ukrainians find more victims near Bucha

A member of an extraction crew works during an exhumation at a mass grave near Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, June 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A member of an extraction crew works during an exhumation at a mass grave near Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, June 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)


BUCHA, Ukraine -- The lush green beauty of a pine forest with singing birds contrasted with the violent evidence of newly discovered victims of Russia's war in Ukraine, as workers exhumed bodies from another mass grave near the town of Bucha on Kyiv's outskirts.

The hands of several victims were tied behind their backs. The gruesome work of digging up the remains coincided with the Ukrainian police chief's report authorities have opened criminal investigations into the killings of more than 12,000 people since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

Workers wearing white hazmat suits and masks used shovels to exhume bodies from the soil of the forest, marking each section with small yellow numbered signs on the ground. The bodies, covered in cloth and dirt, attracted flies.

"Shots to the knees tell us that people were tortured," Andriy Nebytov, head of the Kyiv regional police, said at the scene. "The hands tied behind the back with tape say that people had been held [hostage] for a long time and [enemy forces] tried to get any information from them."

Since the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region at the end of March, authorities say they have uncovered the bodies of 1,316 people, many in mass graves in the forest and elsewhere.

The horrors of Bucha shocked the world after Russian troops left. The mass grave reporters saw Monday was just behind a trench dug out for a military vehicle. The bodies of seven civilians were retrieved. Two of the bodies were found with their hands tied and gunshot wounds to the knees and head, Nebytov said.

National police chief Igor Klimenko told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Monday criminal investigations into the deaths of more than 12,000 Ukrainians included some found in mass graves. He said the mass killings also were done by troops firing from tanks and armored personnel carriers. Bodies were found lying on streets and homes, as well as in mass graves.

He didn't specify how many of the more than 12,000 were civilians and how many were military.

Complete information about the number of bodies in mass graves or elsewhere isn't known, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. He cited the case of two children who died with their parents in the basement of an apartment building in Mariupol in a Russian bombing. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, asked:

"Why is this happening in 2022? This is not the 1940s. How could mass killings, torture, burned cities, and filtration camps set up by the Russian military in the occupied territories resembling Nazi concentration camps come true?"

UKRAINE VOWS LIBERATION

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had driven the Russians out of more than 1,000 settlements since the war began, and he vowed Monday they would liberate all occupied territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

In his nightly video address, he said the battle over the Donbas "will surely go down in military history as one of the most brutal battles in and for Europe."

"The price of this battle for us is very high," he said. "It's just terrible."

The total frontline in the country, he said, is now 1,550 miles long.

Amnesty International, in a report Monday, accused Russia of indiscriminate use of banned cluster munitions in strikes on Kharkiv, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, has been subject to intensive shelling since Russia began attacking Ukraine.

"The repeated use of widely banned cluster munitions is shocking, and a further indication of utter disregard for civilian lives," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's senior crisis response adviser. "The Russian forces responsible for these horrific attacks must be held accountable for their actions, and victims and their families must receive full reparations."

The report cited doctors in Kharkiv hospitals who showed researchers distinctive fragments they had removed from patients' bodies, as well as survivors and witnesses of the attacks.

Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai told reporters fierce street-fighting continued Monday in Sievierodonetsk, one of two large cities in the Donbas region still to be fully captured by Russian troops.

During the day, Haidai updated his estimate of how much of the city Russians control from 70% to 80%. Ukrainian forces are fighting the enemy "block by block, street by street, house by house with a varying degree of success," he told reporters.

More than 10,000 people remain in the city. Haidai said efforts to evacuate them have been halted because Russian troops destroyed two of the three bridges connecting Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, the second city in Luhansk not yet overrun by Moscow. The remaining bridge is old, decrepit and unsafe, the governor said.

"Most likely, today or tomorrow, they will throw all reserves to capture the city," Haidai said, referring to Russian forces.

In an update Monday, Haidai said Russian forces were heavily shelling an industrial zone that includes a chemical plant where about 500 civilians, including 40 children, were sheltering. Efforts were underway to evacuate the civilians, he added

Lysychansk remains under Ukrainian control, but is regularly shelled by the Russian forces. On Sunday, Haidai said, the shelling killed three civilians in the city, including a 6-year-old boy.

Eduard Basurin, an official of the Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk, claimed Monday Sievierodonetsk has been blocked off and Ukrainian fighters have no choice but to surrender. Haidai dismissed that as "a lie."

"There is no threat of our troops being encircled in the Luhansk region," he said.

Russia-backed separatists in the Donetsk region said Monday Ukrainian forces shelled a market in the city of Donetsk, killing three civilians and injuring 18 more. It was the fiercest shelling by Ukrainian forces since 2015, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

The head of the Russian-backed government in Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, also cited heavy shelling, and said on his Telegram channel more forces -- especially Russians -- were being called in to help.

The Russian military said Monday it destroyed "a large number of weapons and military equipment" that Ukrainian forces had received from the U.S. and Europe.

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said "high-precision air-launched missiles" hit the supplies near the Udachna railway station in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. Konashenkov also said "a temporary deployment point for foreign mercenaries" and a Ukrainian radar station of the Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile system were destroyed in the neighboring Luhansk region.

Two batteries of multiple-launch rocket systems were destroyed in the Luhansk and Kharkiv regions, Konashenkov said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the Russian claim from Ukraine.

The battle has highlighted Ukraine's urgent need for more firepower, with Soviet-era ammunition running out, and led to urgent calls from Ukrainian leaders for more, and faster, deliveries of military supplies from Western allies.

"Over time, we receive far less than we lose," said Taras Chmut, director of the Come Back Alive foundation, a volunteer nongovernmental organization that supports the Ukrainian military. "We are depleting faster than they do."

ALGERIA ENDS SPAIN PACT

Spain's economy minister on Monday linked Algeria's decision to break a decades-old friendship treaty with Spain, which has frozen economic links, with what she described as the North African country's increasing alignment with Russia.


In an interview with Catalunya Radio, Nadia Calvino said that in recent International Monetary Fund meetings she has chaired, she noticed "that Algeria was more and more aligned with Russia, and as such, it [the decision] didn't surprise me."

Algeria suspended the two-decade-old friendship treaty with Spain last Wednesday.

The move was seen as retaliation after Madrid came out in support of Morocco's attempts to keep Western Sahara under its rule. Algeria supports the territory's independence movement.

On Friday, the EU warned it was prepared to take action to defend the interests of its members.

Algeria then appeared to do a U-turn when its mission at the European Union issued a statement saying the country had never suspended the treaty.

Algeria continues to block trade, however, and the Algerian Foreign Ministry on Saturday called the European response "hasty and unfounded." In a strongly worded communique, it added the issue was "a political disagreement of a bilateral nature" between Madrid and Algiers that should not concern the EU.

Calvino welcomed the EU move, adding that the treaty suspensions would be a drag on the Spanish economy. She said "the most important thing at this moment is that Algeria changes its position and retreats."

Spanish officials say they are hopeful talks with Algeria will resolve the issue soon.

Spain's chief worry has been the suspension might affect important gas supplies from Algeria, but both the Spanish and Algerian governments have said this won't happen. Algeria supplies 23% of Spain's gas needs.

Spain and the rest of the 27-nation bloc are hustling to find alternatives to Russian energy imports to protest Russia's war in Ukraine.

Information for this article was contributed by Oleksandr Stashevskyi and Ciaran Giles of The Associated Press as well as Valerie Hopkins and Matthew Mpoke Bigg of The New York Times.

  photo  Members of an extraction crew work during an exhumation at a mass grave near Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, June 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
 
 
  photo  FILE - A lifeless body of a man with his hands tied behind his back lies on the ground in Bucha, Ukraine, on April 3, 2022. Police are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war Russia is waging, the national police chief said Monday. In the Kyiv region near Bucha, authorities showed several victims whose hands were tied behind their backs. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)
 
 
  photo  FILE - Men wearing protective gear carry a dead body during the exhumation of killed civilians in Bucha, outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, April 8, 2022. Police are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war Russia is waging, the national police chief said Monday. In the Kyiv region near Bucha, authorities showed several victims whose hands were tied behind their backs. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, FILE)
 
 
  photo  FILE - U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, center, stands on the side of a mass grave in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 28, 2022. Police are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war Russia is waging, the national police chief said Monday. In the Kyiv region near Bucha, authorities showed several victims whose hands were tied behind their backs. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
 
 
  photo  FILE - Nadiya Trubchaninova, 70, cries while holding the coffin of her son Vadym, 48, who was killed by Russian soldiers last March 30 in Bucha, during his funeral in the cemetery of Mykulychi, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 16, 2022. Police are investigating the killings of more than 12,000 Ukrainians nationwide in the war Russia is waging, the national police chief said Monday. In the Kyiv region near Bucha, authorities showed several victims whose hands were tied behind their backs. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File)
 
 


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