Footage of Russian troops shooting a man with his hands up on a highway outside Kyiv at the beginning of March was shared around the world. Now the Russians have been pushed out of the area and the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen has been to see the grim aftermath of their short-lived occupation. We counted 13 bodies on a nightmarish stretch of road not much more than 200 yards long, between Mria and Myla, villages whose Ukrainian names translate as Dream and Sweetheart.
Two of the dead are confirmed as Ukrainian civilians who were killed by the Russians. The others have not been identified yet – they lie where they were killed – but only two are wearing recognisable Ukrainian military uniforms.
Our BBC team was able to get to the area, on the main E-40 highway as it approaches Kyiv, because Ukrainian forces had captured the sector only 10 hours earlier.
The marks of battle and of heavy shelling were everywhere. Petrol stations and a hotel that was well-known for its spa and restaurant were in ruins. Shell holes and craters pockmarked both carriageways.
Ukrainian troops changing a wheel in the ruins of a roadside garage said the Russians were about 4km (2.5 miles) away and had pulled their remaining men and armour back after a hard fight, lasting several days, in the early hours of the morning.
Left behind in the heart of the desolation were the dead bodies, and a mass of questions and concerns about who they were and how they died.
Some answers already exist for a couple who were killed by the Russians and left to decompose on 7 March. Their rusty, shrapnel riddled car lies in the road next to one of the petrol stations, reduced to a shell by fire. Next to it are the burnt and twisted remains of a body that is just about recognisable as the remains of a man. A wedding ring is still on the corpse’s finger. Stretched out inside the hulk of their car is what is left of the incinerated body of a woman, the mouth opened in what looks like a scream.
Their deaths were filmed by a Ukrainian drone on 7 March, operated by the Bugatti unit of Territorial Defence. The unit released the video, which was republished by news organisations around the world. It caused outrage because it showed the cold-blooded killing of a man who had raised his arms to show he was harmless, in the classic gesture of surrender.
The bodies, the BBC discovered in an investigation this month, are of Maksim Iowenko and his wife Ksjena. They were part of a convoy of 10 civilian vehicles who were trying to escape the Russians and get to Kyiv.
As they drove down the road, they spotted a Russian tank in position, dug into the grass verge. The drone video shows it was clearly marked with the letter V, one of the identifiers used by the Russian armed forces. The other cars did quick U-turns and drove away at speed. But Maksim’s car stopped, most likely because it was hit.
As soon as the car stopped, Maksim leapt out and raised his hands. Within seconds he was shot dead. His wife was killed in the car. Also in the car were their six-year-old son and the elderly mother of one of Maksim’s friends. Both of them survived and were eventually released by the Russian soldiers.
They were found walking back down the road,and the woman told her family that Maksim was shouting that a child was in the car when he was killed. Both survivors, according to the Bugatti drone unit, are now safe but deeply traumatised.
Source- BBC
