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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Tim Hanlon

Ukraine town found with horrors 'more dreadful' than Bucha, says Zelensky

A Ukrainian town has been found in a "significantly more dreadful" state than the horrors that were uncovered in Bucha, said President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Images are starting to emerge from Borodyanka, north east of Kyiv, were again Russians have been accused of targeting civilians.

Local officials have said more than 300 people were killed by Russian forces in Bucha, 35 kilometres northwest of the capital Kyiv, and around 50 of them were executed.

Bodies were allegedly found with signs of torture and some with bullets to the head while their hands were bound.

With Russian troops having withdrawn from the north of Kyiv, evidence is emerging of the devastation they caused in areas that they occupied.

Zelensky said that it was worse in Borodyanka than in Bucha (AFP via Getty Images)

"The work to clear the rubble in Borodyanka has begun ... It's significantly more dreadful there. Even more victims from the Russian occupiers," Zelensky said in a video posted on Telegram.

The town is about 25 km from Bucha.

He did not provide any further detail or evidence that Russia was responsible for civilian deaths in the town.

The killing of civilians in the town of Bucha have been widely condemned by the West as war crimes, building pressure for stricter sanctions against Russia.

Borodyanka is north east of the Ukraine capital Kyiv (Celestino Arce Lavin/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock)

"And what will happen when the world learns the whole truth about what the Russian military did in Mariupol?" Zelensky asked.

"There, on almost every street, is what the world saw in Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region after the withdrawal of Russian troops."

Ukraine's Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said 26 bodies had been found under two ruined buildings in Borodyanka.

Many more civilians have been found dead in Borodyanka (Getty Images)

In a televised briefing, Venediktova did not say if the authorities had established the cause of death, but she accused Russian troops of carrying out air strikes on the town before they seized control of it.

"Borodyanka is the worst in terms of destruction and in terms of the uncertainty about (the number of) victims," she said.

Moscow says one of the aims of its military campaign is to "liberate" largely Russian-speaking places such as the southern port of Mariupol from the threat of genocide by Ukrainian nationalists, who it says have used civilians as human shields.

Horrors are beginning to emerge from the town of Borodyanka (Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Zelensky has rejected those claims, saying they are a baseless pretext for Russia's invasion.

Moscow has denied targeting civilians and says images of bodies in Bucha were staged by the Ukrainian government to justify more sanctions against Moscow and derail peace negotiations.

Ukraine called on allies to stop buying Russian oil and gas, amid divisions in Europe, and to boost it militarily.

"Ukraine needs weapons which will give it the means to win on the battlefield and that will be the strongest possible sanction against Russia," said Zelensky.

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