Ukraine Russia war live updates: Bodies piled up in street as Russian forces pull back

Ukrainian have been confronted with horrific scenes as Russian troops retreat from Kyiv. Warning: Graphic

Ukraine says it has regained control of the Kyiv region, with Russian troops retreating from around the capital and Chernigiv city, as evidence emerged of possible civilian killings in areas the invading forces have been occupying.

AFP reporters saw at least 20 bodies on a single street in the town of Bucha near the capital city, including one with his hands tied, and the body of a missing photographer was discovered in a nearby village.

“All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP, adding that 280 other bodies had been buried in mass graves in the town.

A destroyed building Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, where the town's mayor said 280 people had been buried in a mass grave. Picture: AFP

A playground with bullet holes in Bucha. Picture: AFP

Meanwhile, in an attempt to raise economic pressure on Russia, the Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania announced Saturday that they had stopped all imports of Russian natural gas.

As it withdraws from some northern areas, Russia appears to be focusing on eastern and southern Ukraine, where it already holds vast swathes of territory.

“What is the aim of the Russian forces? They want to seize both Donbass and the south of Ukraine,” Zelensky said in a video address late Saturday. “What is our goal? To defend our freedom, our land and our people.” But Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak warned on social media that “without heavy weapons we won’t be able to drive (Russia) out”.

Women cry outside their houses in Bucha. Picture: AFP

Ukraine authorities nevertheless offered citizens elements of good news Saturday in claiming progress against the Russians more than five weeks after Moscow’s invasion triggered Europe’s worst conflict in decades.

“Irpin, Bucha, Gostomel and the whole Kyiv region were liberated from the invader,” deputy defence minister Ganna Maliar said on Facebook, referring to towns that have been heavily damaged or destroyed by fighting.

Putin ordered tanks into Russia’s pro-Western neighbour on February 24, and Ukraine estimates 20,000 people have been killed in the war so far.

More than 10 million have had to flee their homes.

Pope Francis spoke of “icy winds of war” again sweeping over Europe as he brought up the conflict Saturday at the outset of his trip to Malta -- and made what appeared to be a barely veiled reference to Putin.

“Once again, some potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, is provoking and fomenting conflicts,” the pope said, adding he was still considering a visit to Ukraine’s capital.

JOURNALIST KILLED WITH ‘TWO SHOTS’

Ukrainian authorities said Saturday the body of a well-known photographer, Maks Levin, had been found near a village in the region around Kyiv that had been caught up in the fighting.

Levin became the sixth journalist killed in the war, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Prosecutors said Levin, who was unarmed, “was killed by servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces with two shots from small fire arms.” Levin, a 40-year-old father of four, had been reported missing on March 13; the body was found on April 1.

In Bucha, 16 of the 20 corpses found on one street were lying either on the pavement or by the verge. Three were sprawled in the middle of the road, and another lay on his side in the courtyard of a destroyed house.

Ukrainian photographer and documentary maker Maks Levin has been found dead near the capital Kyiv. Picture: AFP

“These are the consequences of Russian occupation,” said Fedoruk, Bucha’s mayor. Ukrainian troops, meanwhile, were seen patrolling in armoured vehicles and on foot through the ravaged town, where some women wept as they stood outside their homes.

The International Criminal Court has already opened a probe into possible war crimes committed in Ukraine, and several Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have accused Putin of being a “war criminal”.

And in Russia, hundreds of people gathered across the country Saturday to protest the war in Ukraine. Police detained 211 people in several cities, including more than 20 people in a Moscow park under heavy snowfall, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors arrests.

Russia’s efforts to consolidate its hold on southern and eastern areas of Ukraine have been hampered by the resistance of Mariupol despite devastating attacks lasting weeks.

RUSSIA ACCUSED OF PLANTING BOOBYTRAPS

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned his people retreating Russian forces were creating “a complete disaster” outside the capital Kyiv by leaving boobytraps in the form of mines across “the whole territory,” including around homes and dead bodies.

He said Russian forces were withdrawing slowly and warned: “They are mining the whole territory. They are mining homes, mining equipment, even the bodies of people who were killed. There are a lot of trip wires, a lot of other dangers.”

It comes as he refused on Saturday (AEDT) to say whether he had ordered an airstrike on Russian soil, as a bus convoy navigated a tortuous evacuation to help thousands flee the besieged city of Mariupol.

Peace talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials resumed via video, but the Kremlin warned the helicopter attack on a fuel depot in the town of Belgorod would hamper negotiations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Picture: AFP

Dozens of buses tightly packed with exhausted evacuees from Mariupol and other Russian-occupied cities in southeast Ukraine arrived in Zaporizhzhia to the relief of waiting relatives, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.

The passengers included people who managed to flee besieged Mariupol, as well as residents of Berdiansk and nearby Melitopol.

As the coaches pulled into a shopping centre on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia more than 200 kilometres northwest, some evacuees wept with relief to be back in Ukrainian-controlled territory.

“We were crying when we reached this area. We were crying when we saw soldiers at the checkpoint with Ukrainian crests on their arms,” said Olena, who carried her young daughter in her arms.

Two women hug as a convoy of 30 buses carrying evacuees from Mariupol and Melitopol arrive in Zaporizhzhia. Picture: AFP

“My house was destroyed. I saw it in photos. Our city doesn’t exist anymore.”

Mariupol has suffered near-total destruction since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leaving residents without food, water and heat as they endured heavy bombardment.

On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said its rescue convoy had been forced to turn back after it became “impossible to proceed”. It said it would try another evacuation attempt Saturday.

An estimated 160,000 people are believed to still be trapped in the southeastern port city after several evacuation attempts collapsed, though some have made the dangerous dash to freedom alone.

In a video address posted on Telegram, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed Friday that 42 buses from Berdiansk had successfully brought people to safety, including Mariupol residents. Another 771 Mariupol residents had found their own transportation to Zaporizhzhia, she added.

“Know and believe: we are with you,” Vereshchuk said.

UKRAINIANS CONTINUE TO FLEE

Helena was watching television with her husband and two children when their regular program was interrupted with news Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had begun.

“We thought ‘this is bad’ but we are okay here in Kharkiv, maybe this will be like in the east of the country where there has been fighting for eight years,” she recalled as she clutched her children outside the train station in Lviv in Ukraine’s west.

Days later and from their window they saw an apartment block being shelled in a neighbouring district by Russian artillery, then another down the street then another across the road.

Strikes on residential areas in Kyiv killed at least two people early on March 15, emergency services said, as Russian troops intensified their attacks on the Ukrainian capital. Picture: AFP

Firefighters remove the body of a woman out of a destroyed apartment building in Kyiv. Picture: AFP

“We couldn’t understand what was happening why bomb homes but we left in 30 minutes just carrying what we could and now we are here and don’t know what to do.”

She would later hear her building too was struck.

Her story is not unique as after one month of war more than four million Ukrainians are now displaced, not knowing what to do or where to go. And most left in a rush, with just what they could carry.

Scenes of devastation are not contained to the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv or the port city of Mariupol so often featured on the news but all cities in the country are suffering.

It is like driving through the film set of a bad zombie movie, usually years after an apocalyptic event, torn clothes, blank stares shuffling through rubble but this has all happened in just over 30 days and is very real.

A closer overview multispectral image of burning oil storage tanks and industrial area in Chernihiv, Ukraine. Picture: AFP

While many Ukrainians fled, others today can be seen dishevelled moving about the ruins of their former cities and towns attempting to eke out an existence in the devastation and the sub zero temperatures. It is hard to discern the ash from the snow falling about smouldering buildings.

On the street people cry for the lives they lived now lost, they cry over the bodies of strangers still lying where they fell with just an old bed sheet or a blanket of snow to give them a trace of dignity.

CITIES IN RUINS

Drone footage shows the extent of the ruins, which inexplicably are still being shelled by the Russian military but the flyovers cannot capture the street level emotion of ruined lives. That mental toll will take a generation to rebuild if at all.

Ukrainian soldiers carry a dead soldier through debris at the military school hit by Russian rockets the day before, in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, on March 19. Picture: AFP

In the early days of the war, the government in Kyiv had been giving a running total of the non-military buildings and infrastructure being destroyed across the country, initially it was by address, then institution like a school or hospital then it was simply by city such was its extent.

A view of the damage at the Retroville shopping mall, a day after it was shelled by Russian forces in a residential district in the northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Picture: AFP

Conservative estimates puts the damage bill at more than $83 billion since Russia’s February 24 invasion including destruction or severe damage to 4431 residential buildings, 92 factories/ warehouses, 378 institutions of secondary and higher education, 138 healthcare institutions, 11 shopping malls, 12 civilian airports and seven thermal and or hydro-electric power plants.

According to the Kyiv School of Economics, if reconstruction started tomorrow with unlimited money and manpower, lives and the economy could return to normal by 2037. The toll on Ukraine society cannot be calculated.

Originally published as Ukraine Russia war live updates: Bodies piled up in street as Russian forces pull back