Ukrainian civilians have been tortured and slaughtered with corpses being left booby-trapped with explosives by retreating Russian soldiers, claim reports.
Bodies with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture lay scattered across cities including Bucha and Hostomel causing global outrage.
As Russian troops have eased back from their attacks on Kyiv and northern Ukraine, the extent of the devastation caused by the invasion is beginning to be fully understood.
And there are reports of apparent torture and murder of civilians with bodies lying in the streets and claims of how people were randomly gunned down.
Hostomel was the scene of intense fighting at the start of the invasion before Ukraine soldiers finally regained control of the strategically important airport.
The Hostomel mayor Yriy Pzylyko was among those killed and his body was left with explosives to try and cause more death and destruction, reported The Times.
Archpriest Piotr Pavlenko went to see the body of the mayor who was his friend but he was told not to touch the corpse as it would explode.
It follows reports that bodies were left rigged with explosives in Irpin on top of the signs of torture taking place in Bucha.
Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Yurchenko claimed the attacks on civilians in Bucha were especially disturbing.
“Bucha was not so badly damaged as Hostomel but crimes were carried out deliberately on the civilians,” Yurchenko said, reported The Times.
“Now we are discovering this is the case for so many places that the Russians occupied. In places where the fighting was intense, like Hostomel, probably more people have been killed. In occupied places like Bucha, women were raped, children were shot, people’s bodies were run over.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky also hit out at the torture and claimed bodies were "mined".
"After what was revealed in Bucha and our other cities the occupiers were expelled from. Hundreds of people were killed. Tortured, executed civilians. Corpses on the streets. Mined area. Even the bodies of the dead were mined," he said.
"The pervasive consequences of looting. Concentrated evil has come to our land. Murderers. Torturers. Rapists. Looters. Who call themselves the army. And who deserve only death after what they did."
Zelensky gave a message to Russians wanting mothers to know what the soldiers were doing to civilians in Ukraine.
"I want every mother of every Russian soldier to see the bodies of the killed people in Bucha, in Irpin, in Hostomel. What did they do? Why were they killed?" he said.
"What did the man who was riding his bicycle down the street do? Why were ordinary civilians in an ordinary peaceful city tortured to death? Why were women strangled after their earrings were ripped out of their ears? How could women be raped and killed in front of children?
"How could their corpses be desecrated even after death? Why did they crush the bodies of people with tanks? What did the Ukrainian city of Bucha do to your Russia? How did all this become possible?
"Russian mothers! Even if you raised looters, how did they also become butchers? You couldn't be unaware of what's inside your children. You couldn't overlook that they are deprived of everything human. No soul. No heart. They killed deliberately and with pleasure."
