Ukrainian woman mourns after finding husband in shallow grave in gut-wrenching photo

As Russian forces retreat to eastern Ukraine, the carnage they left in a town just 60km from the capital Kyiv is being revealed. WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES

Unbearable images of pain have emerged from the Ukrainian town of Andriivka showing the moment a woman discovers her husband’s body in a shallow grave.

The woman, who has not been named, is seen collapsed in despair beside her husband’s body.

His body is laid out on plastic beside the pit still dressed in a striped orange top and blue jeans.

The distraught woman is helped up by a police officer and another man.

The woman reacts after her husband’s body was exhumed from a shallow grave near their home in the village of Andriivka. Picture: Sergei Supinsky /AFP

Andriivka, some 60km away from the capital of Kyiv, was held by the Russians for around a month.

As Russian forces retreat to eastern Ukraine, the carnage they left is being revealed.

Once home to about 1000 people, the town has reportedly suffered a loss of 40 residents.

A police officer and another man help the woman. Picture: Sergei Supinsky /AFP

Grigoriy Klymenko, who stayed in the town to be with his bedridden 90-year-old mother, said they watched in terror as tanks encircled the village.

“They’re animals,” he told the BBC of the forces that moved in.

“Humans don’t behave like this. My parents told me about the war and the fascists didn’t even do such things.”

Other woman comfort the grieving wife. Picture: Sergei Supinsky /AFP

Twenty-three-year-old Anton Ischenko was led away at gunpoint and found dead with a mutilated body after the Russians left the village, his grandmother Tetiana said.

“He was a very nice boy, very clever – he recited poetry,” she told the BBC.

“Maybe if he had gone to fight somewhere else, he would have returned here in one piece.”

In tears, she continued: “When my husband told the Russians, ‘Take me instead,’ they pointed a machine gun at him and said, ‘Go home – or we will take you both.’”

Originally published as Ukrainian woman mourns after finding husband in shallow grave in gut-wrenching photo