Photo: t.me/OleksiyKuleba
The Head of the humanitarian headquarters of the Kyiv region, Oleksiy Kuleba, showed Borodyanka after russian troops left and stated that hundreds of civilians had been killed.
“The settlement has turned into ruins: houses and infrastructure destroyed, cars burned in the streets. The worst is that hundreds of civilians were killed, and hundreds were injured. The russian occupiers organized the genocide of Ukrainians. It cannot be called otherwise,” Oleksiy Kuleba wrote in his telegram channel.
He said rescuers and police officers are currently working in the settlement. Its cleaning and demining are underway.
Photos: t.me/OleksiyKuleba
According to the Acting Head of Borodyanka, the russian military opened fire on all those who tried to dismantle the rubble of destroyed high-rise buildings and save those trapped there.
“In the first days, when the columns passed, they shot civilians and shelled houses, even though no one opened fire on them. Our territorial defense had only machine guns. But they still fired at houses and residents,” Yerko said to ‘Obozrevatel.’
According to him, when the column was passing Borodyanka, the russian enemy opened fire on the residents and killed the first eight people. Later, the occupiers fired at people not only from machine guns but also from heavy weapons.
Russian occupiers dropped air bombs on nine-story buildings.
“People in the basements were buried alive. We immediately tried to dig them out. An air alert was on. Then columns of tanks and armored personnel vehicles started moving again – and they shot at those cars and people who tried to dig people out. We [later] turned to them even in writing, but they did not allow us to excavate people,” Yerko said.
He said that during the occupation of Borodyanka, enemies did not allow the opening of green corridors for evacuation.
“The so-called ‘green corridor’ when we first reached an agreement about it, existed not from 9 am to 3 pm, but just for 1 hour and 20 minutes. We evacuated about 400 people from the long-term care facility,” said the settlement Head.
He added that further attempts to evacuate civilians failed as fighting was going on around Borodyanka.
“Loudspeakers were not allowed; we were not allowed to walk on the streets. There was no mobile connection in Borodyanka for about ten days. We did not know how to inform people that we were going to evacuate them. Therefore, brave people were just running the streets and shouting about the evacuation at their own risk. And when the evacuation to Gomel in Belarus began, people no longer knew whether they would be taken to Gomel or taken to our motherland, Ukraine,” Yerko recalls.
He informed that the headquarters in Borodyanka is working now, the bodies of the dead are being searched, demining continues, and power lines are being restored.
The russians have captured Borodyanka in the Bucha district since the first days of the war. The enemy razed it to the ground, striking with various weapons. On April 1, it was liberated from the invaders.
After clearing the territories of the Kyiv region from the occupiers, the scale of the atrocities they committed against civilians became clear. They did it to children, women, the elderly, men - all without exception.