On 29 April, a pit containing the bodies of three men, who had been beaten up by Russian soldiers and then brutally killed, was found in Bucha district of the Kyiv region, according to the press service of the National Police of Ukraine.

“The victims were tortured for a long period of time; bullet wounds were found in their limbs. Finally, each of the men was shot in the ear. This is another mass burial carried out by the occupiers in the Bucha district, the long-suffering district where more than 1,000 citizens were killed and tortured,” Kyiv Police Chief Andrii Niebytov said.

The burial site was in the woods near the village of Myrotske. The victims‘ hands were tied, and they had been blindfolded.

Police have already examined the bodies of the dead, and they are being sent for a forensic medical examination. In total, investigators examined 1,202 bodies of civilians killed by Russian invaders in the Kyiv region.

At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine stated that in just two months of a full-scale invasion, law enforcement officers received more than 7,000 reports of disappearances. Subsequently, about half of them were found. About 2,000 bodies of the dead received the status of unidentified, among them 1,282 were identified. To date, 927 DNA examinations have been scheduled as part of criminal proceedings.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs emphasises that the prospect of further work of investigators and experts in the liberated territories is disappointing, so Ukrainian law enforcement officers are turning for help to partner countries and international organisations to supply reagents, attract additional expert groups and create a modern, unified register of missing persons.

Bohdan Marusyak

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