Destroyed vehicles on the main highway near Dmytrivka, Ukraine on April 3, 2022. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times
Destroyed vehicles on the main highway near Dmytrivka, Ukraine on April 3, 2022. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times
Warning: Graphic and distressing content
Photographs from the Ukrainian village of Buzova make up a tableau of horrific images: charred corpses strewn across the road, mangled bodies piled on top of one another, one man lying in a field with a bullet in his head.
Together, the images confirm theaccounts of local Ukrainians who say that Russian forces killed as many as 50 civilians as they tried to flee fighting northwest of Kyiv last month. The bodies lay along or near the M06 highway, which runs west from Kyiv, the capital, to the city of Zhytomyr.
The scene, another potential example of Russian war crimes, was found 17 miles (27km) from Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv where Russian soldiers killed hundreds of civilians during their occupation before pulling out of the area last week.
"I now call it the road of death," said Taras Didych, mayor of the district, Dmytrivka, where most of the bodies were found. The highway strings together the towns and villages that were recently retaken from Russian forces, who were pushed back and retreated after their failed attempt to take the capital. "We are just coming back to life," he said.
Rescue workers remove debris and search for bodies buried in the rubble of a bombed apartment building in Borodyanka, Ukraine on April 9. Photo / Daniel Berehulak, The New York Times
Didych shared the grim findings he encountered when he returned to the road last week.
"Some were burned. Others had their hands tied. Others were shot in the head outside their cars," Didych said.
Those descriptions corresponded to images he shared with The New York Times that Didych said he had taken on his phone at the scene.
Most of the bodies appear to have been shot and burned, either because the vehicles they were riding in caught fire or because the cars were intentionally torched.
"They were trying to flee," Didych said. "Some could not manage to make it."
Didych said it wasn't clear when the killings took place, or if they had all happened at the same time. He said it was more likely that Russian forces killed families intermittently as they tried to escape their homes during the month that invading troops occupied this strip of territory outside of Kyiv.
Most of the dead were found near a hotel called Babushkin Sad, or Granny's Garden, between the towns of Mriia and Myla, whose names in Ukrainian mean "dream" and "pleasant village", Didych said.
"My heart was bleeding," he said when he discovered the scene on the road. "This may have been the worst experience of my life."
Ukrainian fighters survey the burnt-out remnants of as many as nine Russian tanks left on a forest road outside Dmytrivka, Ukraine on April 2, 2022. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times
Two other bodies, which Didych said were Ukrainian soldiers, were found in a grave dug outside a nearby gas station. They were still wearing their uniforms, he said.
Didych said that as of Sunday, 60 bodies had been found in his district, which includes 14 villages. Russian forces had destroyed at least 60 private homes and three supermarkets, as well as municipal water tanks and an ambulance facility, he said.
