They had the effect of a bomb and were a shock to the international community.
Images of the bodies of 57 people, found in a mass grave in Boutcha, a town near kyiv taken over by Ukrainian forces where many corpses had already been discovered, were unveiled following statements on Sunday by the local relief chief, showing an AFP team this site.
A dozen corpses were visible, some only partially buried, behind a church in the center of this locality located northwest of the Ukrainian capital.
Several were in black body bags, others were in civilian clothes.
“Here, in this long grave, 57 people are buried,” Serhii Kaplytchnyi, who organized the recovery of the bodies, told AFP.
After the discovery the day before of many dead bodies in Boutcha, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kouleba denounced Sunday a “deliberate” act by the Russian forces.
300 bodies buried in mass graves
AFP had seen on Saturday the corpses of at least twenty men wearing civilian clothes lying in a street in Boutcha, reconquered this week by Ukrainian troops.
One of them had his hands tied and the bodies were scattered for several hundred meters.
300 bodies were buried in mass graves according to the mayor.
Some elements found on the spot raise fears of war crimes.
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“The images reaching us from Boutcha, a liberated town near kyiv, are unbearable.
In the streets, hundreds of cowardly murdered civilians.
My compassion for the victims, my solidarity with the Ukrainians.
The Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes,” Emmanuel Macron tweeted.
After learning about the corpses discovered in Boutcha, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian “condemns in the strongest terms such acts constituting, if confirmed, war crimes”.
"We will work, together with our partners, the Ukrainian authorities and the competent international jurisdictions, in particular the International Criminal Court, to ensure that these acts do not go unpunished and that those responsible are tried and sentenced," he said.
“These images are a punch in the stomach”
The United States and NATO on Sunday expressed horror at reports of atrocities against civilians attributed to Russian forces in Boutcha.
"These images are a punch in the stomach," reacted the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken on the CNN channel, recalling having warned "before Russia's aggression" that it risked "committing atrocities ".
“We cannot normalize this.
This is the reality of what is happening every day, as Russia's brutality against Ukraine continues.
That's why it has to stop,” he said.
He reaffirmed that the United States was helping to "document" possible "war crimes" with international institutions so that those responsible were "accountable", but refused to say whether he considered these to be "crimes against humanity" or even acts of "genocide".
Read alsoWar in Ukraine: rapes, executions ... Human Rights Watch claims to have documented Russian "war crimes"
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz demanded that light be shed on the “crimes committed by the Russian army” in Boutcha.
"We must shed full light on these crimes committed by the Russian army," said the head of government in a short statement sent by his press service.
"The perpetrators of these crimes and their sponsors must be held accountable", he added, demanding in particular that international organizations have access to the region to "document these atrocities".
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for his part considered that this violence was "horrible", denouncing a "brutality unprecedented in Europe for decades".
“It is absolutely unacceptable that civilians are being targeted and killed, and this underlines the importance of ending this war,” he said on the same channel.