The world is still reeling from the horrific scenes that emerged from Bucha, a town near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, where people were reportedly shot at a point-blank range and streets remained littered with dead bodies for weeks.
Now in a fresh set of horrors, reports from doctors are stating that women in several towns near Kyiv who have been buried in mass graves were most likely raped before they got killed. This comes just as the Russian forces have retracted from some of the key cities in Ukraine.
Vladyslav Perovskyi, a Ukrainian forensic doctor, has been carrying out dozens of autopsies on bodies that were buried in mass graves in Bucha, Irpin, and Borodianka, while the towns remained under the siege of Russian forces for a month.
Perovskyi, along with a team of coroners, found evidence that women buried in these mass graves were raped before they were killed. While speaking to The Guardian, the doctor said, “We already have a few cases which suggest that these women had been raped before being shot to death.”
The forensic expert further said that many of the bodies that were buried in the mass graves were burned or mutilated beyond recognition. He said, “There are many burnt bodies and heavily disfigured bodies that are just impossible to identify.”
Recounting the gory details of the massacre that took place in Ukrainian towns, Perovskyi said, “The face (of the person) could be smashed into pieces, you can’t put it back together, sometimes there’s no head at all.”
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Revealing details from his autopsy reports of the dozens of bodies his team has examined, the doctor told The Guardian that the women seemed to be killed by automatic gunfire, with more than six bullet holes in their backs during the examination.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has entered its third month, with many allies now supplying weapons to the war-torn country to counter the Russian forces. Meanwhile, Russian authorities have said that the supply of high-power weaponry to Ukraine can lead to a “real threat of World War III.”
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