The victims were found shot in their car. They undoubtedly sought to flee the bombings.
Le Monde with AFP
The Ukrainian forces have made a new macabre discovery in the Kharkiv region (northeast), where they continue to push their Russian enemy. At least twenty civilians were found shot in their car near Koupiansk, the regional governor, Oleh Synehoubov, on Telegram on Saturday. According to him, “the occupants [the Russian army] attacked these civilians who were trying to escape the bombings”. “It is cruelty that has no justification,” he denounced. According to Mr. Synehoubov, “police and experts went there” and “an investigation is underway”.
Friday, a team from the France-Presse agency had seen at least eleven corps of civilians, killed in the same way, on a road abandoned by the Russians when they withdraw from the region last week. The convoy of vehicles that AFP saw on Friday was precisely on a road from the village of Kyrylivka, 70 kilometers east of Kharkiv, when targeted. On site, the corpses were still there, inside or next to six vehicles. A minibus was fully burned, four bodies, one of which is pretending to be that of a child, lying on the seats.
The place where the dozen civilians were found is in a place where fighting between Ukrainians and Russians took place recently, kyiv’s forces leading a large-scale counter-offensive in the region. Faced with important military difficulties, the Russian soldiers fell further, on the other side of the Oskil river, but the Ukrainians have since managed to cross it, which marks a big success for kyiv, whose army encircles the pocket of Lyman.
A separatist manager Prorusse had, for his part, accused Thursday from Moscow the Ukrainian army of having shot a convoy of civilians in the Kharkiv region, making him thirty deaths, without however providing more details. Since the beginning of the invasion, kyiv has denounced abuses of the invader troops, accusations systematically rejected by Russia.