A disturbing video appears to show the bodies of Ukrainian civilians who were shot in the head while they had their hands tied behind their backs.
In the footage, which has been circulated online by the Donate UA campaign group, people can be seen walking into a building in Bucha, Kyiv Oblast.
According to a translation of the Ukrainian, one person explains that the Russians set up a barracks in the town.
“In the next room they were executing civilians, their bodies are still here,” they tell the camera.
The video then focuses on a row of bodies, kneeling down and slumped against the wall with their hands bound.
“(They) tied their hands and made them kneel facing the wall,” the person continues.
“A shot to the head, and that’s it. The person is no more.”
The military said at least one victim’s kneecaps had been shot first before he received a bullet to the head.
The video is just the latest piece of disturbing evidence to come out of Bucha, a town abandoned by Russian occupiers as they moved the war to the east of Ukraine.
The invading forces have left a trail of destruction in their wake.
Disturbing reports suggest that civilians were mowed down in the street and left to die on the floor, while there have been multiple accounts of women and children being raped.
Ukraine said that 300 people who lost their lives in the town died as a result of “extra-judicial” killings.
Independent journalists have confirmed that people have been bound and shot in the town in apparent executions.
One man was found with no other injuries on his body and powder burns on his face – sometimes a sign that a person has been shot at close range.
The cloth used to bind the man’s hands appeared to be a white armband. Russian troops, while they were in Bucha, required that local residents wear the armbands to identify themselves, according to one woman who was still wearing hers.
“Any war has some rules of engagement for civilians,” Bucha mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk said.
“The Russians have demonstrated that they were consciously killing civilians.|
The Russians have adopted a position of outright denial when pressed on deaths which likely amount to war crimes.
The country’s defence ministry said in a statement: “During the time that Russian armed forces were in control of this settlement, not a single local resident suffered from any violent actions.”
Other senior Russian politicians have claimed, in line with much previous war propaganda, that the Ukrainian military is responsible for the killings.
Kyiv has called for the International Criminal Court to probe the deaths, with Britain and France backing the demands.
