Two teenage sisters were allegedly raped by Russian troops in a small village outside Kyiv which was brutally occupied by Putin’s forces for as month, its deputy mayor has claimed.
Ivankiv, fifty miles north-west of Kyiv, was finally reconnected to the rest of the wartorn country thanks to a pontoon bridge built by Ukrainian army engineers.
But horrdenous stories of alleged war crimes have now emerged since its liberation, including claims that two teenage sisters aged 15 and 16 were raped by the Russian invaders.
Maryna Beschastna, the town’s deputy mayor, claimed that girls restored to cutting their hair ‘to be less attractive’ after Kremlin troops pulled women by their hair out of their basements to be abused.
Maryna Beschastna, Ivankiv deputy mayor, recounted the stories that she had heard from residents who had survived the occupation
The deputy mayor said to ITV News: ‘There was a case in one village, two sister were raped… girls of 15 and 16… children’
Residents of the town gather close together to offer mutual support in the wake of the atrocities committed by now-departed Russian soldiers
Ivankiv was liberated on March 31, 35 days after it fell into the hands of Russian troops on February 27, just two days after the start of the war.
Elena Skoropad, a resident who lived through the occupation ordeal, recounted to ITV News how her 12-year-old son was killed and how she tried desperately to save him.
She told of how her son Artem was hit by shrapnel from Russian cluster munitions and died from his injuries.
Artem, who was a keen backetball player, tried to flee with his mother and step-father Sasha, but the explosion peppered him and forced Ms Skoropad to scoop him up.
‘On the way here in the car Artem was shouting all the way mum, Sasha, I love you.’
‘These were his words, then he kept saying his legs were hurting, his back was hurting. When we brought him [to the hospital] he was still alive but then the injuries were incompatible with life.’
The local hospital is grateful that at last they have been resupplied with fresh medicine and supplies after treating so many injured trauma victims with ‘almost nothing’.
‘We worked without electricity, without water,’ one trauma surgeon said.
Many other towns and villages in the area are reporting similar shocking crimes committed by Russian troops now that they have retreated.
Twenty miles to the south, the town of Borodyanka has been hollowed out by Russian missiles and artillery.
An heavily damaged apartment building following a Russian attack in the center of Borodyanka, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. Another Ukrainian town from which Russian troops have pulled out, leaving behind death and destruction
Entire residential apartment blocks scored direct hits from Russian rockets, scarring and charring the skeletal remnants and the surrounding areas.
In one back garden, the true depravity of the occupation became clear. One man was found not only humiliated but also horribly tortured, with his head bound in plastic.
And yet more horror stories continue to come out of Bucha. Charred body parts lay scattered over the streets for days after a man was killed with a grenade, while men under 50 were stripped naked, tied up and summarily executed by Russians, traumatised civilians have revealed.
The Kremlin has denied any civilian killings, claiming the images emerging from Bucha are fakes produced by Ukrainian forces, or that the deaths occurred after Russian soldiers pulled out.
At a UN Security Council meeting yesterday, Moscow’s ambassador rejected Zelensky’s claims, saying the ‘ungrounded accusations… are not confirmed by any eyewitnesses’.
But satellite photos taken while Bucha was still under Moscow’s control show what appear to be bodies lying in streets where the dead were later found by Ukrainian forces and seen by journalists.
And multiple Bucha residents told AFP they had seen Russian soldiers killing civilians.
