The Russian retreat that left behind corpses on the streets also brought new hope for Ukrainians hopeful the worst has passed
As images of brutality in the suburbs of Kyiv stirred global horror and demands for investigation of war crimes, the Russian retreat that left behind corpses on the streets also brought new hope for Ukrainians returning to parts of a country where, they believe, the worst is over.
Meanwhile, at the Polish border, Ukrainian mothers held hands with their children as they walked back into a country they fled just weeks ago. The exodus from Ukraine continues – more than four million people have now left – but victory over Russian forces in key parts of the country has also created a new desire for people to return. About 537,000 Ukrainians have come back, the interior ministry said Sunday. In the past week, 144,000 people left Ukraine – but 88,000 entered the country.
But it has been a fraught return to a country whose military success in taking back more than 30 towns and villages in the Kyiv region has been joyless, blackened by the gore and destruction left by Russian troops. In Bucha, soldiers extracted corpses with cables, fearful that they had been booby-trapped.
Ukrainian authorities, however, have removed the bodies of 410 civilians from towns around Kyiv, said the country’s prosecutor-general, Iryna Venediktova. Across the country, 158 children have been killed since the beginning of the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, and a further 258 injured, authorities said.
In Mariupol, which has been brutalized by shelling and a lengthy siege, as many as 200,000 people are now in bomb shelters or beneath rubble, a local militia leader said. “We have no way to help them, because we are fighting fierce battles in the city,” Captain Bohdan Krotevych, chief of staff of the Azov Regiment of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces, said in comments reported by Ukrayinska Pravda.
Such signs of success have been enough to convince some local residents to return. On Sunday, Natasha Goncharuk, a government bookkeeper, waited on a chilly platform in Lviv for a train to Kharkiv with her husband and two children. “It’s a quieter place now,” Ms. Goncharuk said. “So we decided Kharkiv is now the best option for us.” She acknowledged that parts of the city had been turned into “hell,” with destruction reaching to within two kilometres of the family home.
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