Bucha, a small suburb of Kyiv, became the place where the “world saw evil” and “woke up” to the threat of Russian troops, Volodimir Zelensky said yesterday while paying tribute to the victims of the occupation of the city, which ended just over a year ago.
More than 175 people were found in mass graves and torture chambers and dozens more on the streets, where they lay for weeks after being executed by the Russians. More than 460 civilians were killed in Bucha alone, while Russian troops killed hundreds in other temporarily occupied areas in the Kyiv region, bringing the total casualty count to some 1,137. “We will not allow this to be forgotten, human decency will not allow us to forget it,” Zelenski stressed, who was accompanied by the leaders of Moldova, Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia, as well as relatives and neighbors of the slain residents.
Zelensky stressed that what happened in Bucha is what could happen in many more cities if Ukraine and its foreign partners did not stop the Russian attack. According to him, “the Ukrainian people stopped the most anti-human force of our time. Russia kills, abuses. It seeks to destroy human dignity, so one person means zero.”
He noted that Ukraine she is being helped by her friends, “by peoples who believe that human life is of the highest value,” which means that the defense against the Russian invasion of the Ukraine is “a battle for the foundation of the free world.” “The Russian evil will fall and cannot rise,” Zelensky stressed, specifically discussing with foreign leaders the importance of holding those responsible for the Bucha massacre and other war crimes to account. He previously said that the day he visited Bucha became the most horrible of the war.
The discovery of the Bucha murders, as well as the destruction in the occupied areas in northern Ukraine, is shaping up to be one of the turning points in a war that has seen Russia fail to achieve its goals after more than 400 years. days.
According to Mykola Bieliskov, a military analyst for the NGO “Come Back Alive”, until that time Ukraine fought mainly with its “stock” of Soviet-era weapons. When he succeeded in driving the Russians away from Kyiv, Chernigiv and Sumy, and the West saw that the country was hell-bent on defending itself, the fastest deliveries of modern weapons began.
The city itself still bears the many injuries it sustained during the occupation. with charred buildings scattered around them and bullet holes visible in the fences and walls of the residential buildings.
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