4.5.22
Ukraine said the town of Borodyanka, near Kyiv, would likely record a higher death toll than Bucha, the town where hundreds of civilians were estimated to be killed and Russia was accused of war crimes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke about Bucha in a Tuesday speech, where he added that the death toll could be higher in other cities that Ukraine recently reclaimed from Russian forces. Ukraine said it retook control of Bucha earlier this week. "There is already information that the number of victims of the occupiers may be even higher in Borodyanka and some other liberated cities," Zelenskyy said. "In many villages of the liberated districts of the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions, the occupiers did things that the locals had not seen even during the Nazi occupation 80 years ago. The occupiers will definitely bear responsibility for this," he continued.
Ukrainian officials said about 300 people were found dead in Bucha after Russian forces left the town. But Zelenskyy said the death toll there would likely rise as officials and investigators looked through the town. Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine's Prosecutor General, also said Borodyanka likely had a higher death toll than Bucha. She told Ukrainian TV that "in fact, the worst situation with civilian victims is in Borodyanka," The Guardian reported. The Zelenskyy advisor Oleksiy Arestovych said on Sunday that some victims there were shot in the head with their hands tied behind their back, and that some women there were raped before they were killed. US President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a "war criminal" over the events in Bucha and said he was planning more sanctions.