Leading the news: Zelensky said there were “even more casualties” in Borodyanka, which is about 15 miles from Bhutan.
Ukraine’s attorney general, Iryna Venediktova, said authorities in the Kiev region – which includes Bucha and Borodyanka – had found “650 dead bodies” and of those “40 bodies” were children, according to Reuters.
Hurry up: The Ukrainian president said earlier this week that he believed the death toll in Borodyanka and other cities recently recaptured by Russian forces “could be even higher” than in Bucha. What it says: “[S]So far, the Russian state and the Russian army are the biggest threat to the planet for freedom, human security, the concept of human rights as such. “After Buha, that is already obvious,” Zelenski said.
“And the work to dismantle the rubble in Borodyanka has begun. It is much worse there,” Zelensky added. “Even more victims of the Russian occupiers.” Zelensky said the attacks in the Kiev region had resulted in “mass killings of civilians”, adding that he was aware that Russian authorities were already working to create “a false campaign to cover up their guilt for the mass killings”. “I want to say right away: Every normal person in the world understands who brought war and mass deaths to Ukrainian soil. There is a lot of evidence that Russian troops are destroying peaceful cities, abducting, torturing, killing civilians.”
Between the lines: National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday: “We have seen atrocities, we have seen war crimes, we have not yet seen a level of systematic deprivation of the Ukrainian people reach the level of genocide.”
President Biden has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes over the alleged atrocities in Bucha.
Go deeper: Dead civilians on the streets of Bucha, near Kyiv, after the withdrawal of Russian troops
