Oleh Tkalenko, the deputy attorney general of the Kiev region, said officials expected many more bodies to be found in the coming weeks. “This is just the beginning. We have just started working in bigger cities like Borodianka, Hostomel, Irpin and Bucha,” Tkalenko said. Several mass graves have been discovered since Ukrainian authorities regained control of Russian-occupied areas of Kiev. “Proper documentation of each person requires time and effort. “But we have to do this to have the evidence, so that there are no stories that it is fake,” Tkalenko said. “I believe that [Russian soldiers] they deliberately left the bodies of civilians killed in the streets and forbade people to bury them to intimidate the population. “ He described three cases of alleged torture against groups of civilians in the area his office was investigating. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians and said Ukraine and the West’s allegations of war crimes were fabricated. Tkalenko claimed that in the city of Motyzhyn, Russian soldiers selected nine people they believed had helped the Ukrainian army. Six people were tortured to death and three survived, he said. “They stripped them, put them in pits, beat them. “They were shot in the legs, arms and tortured,” Tkalenko said. “They were starving.” Tkalenko said officials had begun work on a larger case involving more than 40 people in the village of Dymer, north of Kiev. “They were used as forced laborers. “They made them dig their own graves and broke their fingers,” Tkalenko said. “They shot near the head and between their legs. Those who refused to speak or if they did not like what they were saying were shot in the hand. “They were strangled, their hands were twisted.” The third case under investigation concerns the area of ​​a golf club near the town of Makariv. Russian forces used the club as their headquarters and captured a group of locals. “They were buried alive, they were forced to dig a grave, they were beaten,” Tkalenko said. He refused to give exact details of the reported cases of sexual violence or rape. He said the number of rape cases opened by prosecutors in the Kiev region was dozens. He stressed, however, that the women were reluctant to report sexual violence to the police because they believed the perpetrators would not be arrested. Instead, they contacted psychologists and doctors for help. “People are ashamed to talk about rape,” Tkalenko said. “We approach people and talk to them one by one. “People are better prepared to talk about torture.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that the number of rapes was in the hundreds. A spokesman for Zelensky’s office declined to give an exact number or more details about where the alleged crimes took place and against whom. The attorney general could not comment on the exact number of cases. Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman Lyudmila Denisova said on April 8 that 25 women had been detained in a basement of a house in Bucha and raped systematically. “It is difficult to talk about what is going on in their heads,” Tkalenko said of the Russian military psychology. “But I would say that the Russian army is made up of people who could not afford the bribe to get out of the army. “They even stole people’s boilers.”