Russians burned swastikas into victims’ bodies, raped girls as young as 10: reports
Russian soldiers have raped girls as young as 10 and pulled out Ukrainians’ tongues — while also burning swastikas into their victims’ bodies, Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the United Nations Security Council that the Russians had committed “the most terrible war crimes” since World War Two and terrorized civilians “just for their pleasure.”
“They killed entire families —adults and children — and they tried to burn the bodies,” Zelensky said in a video address on Tuesday. “I am addressing you on behalf of the people who honor the memory of the deceased every single day.”
He described how Russian forces targeted civilians in their cars and on the street, as well as in their own homes.
“Some of them were shot on the streets, others were thrown into wells so they died there in suffering… Civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road — just for their pleasure,” he said.
He also claimed the militants raped and killed Ukrainian women in front of their families.
“They cut off limbs, slashed their throats… Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them,” he said.
“This is no different from other terrorists, such as Daesh,” Zelensky said, using an alternate name for ISIS. “Here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council.”
The harrowing account comes as further allegations emerged that Russian soldiers have raped girls as young as 10 and burned swastikas into their victims’ bodies.
“Russian soldiers loot, rape and kill,” insisted Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian member of Parliament who is among those accusing Russia of genocide.
“Children were found with their hands tied and shot dead. [Russian] soldiers killed them because they could!” tweeted the Kyiv-based politician among reports of hundreds massacred in the capital’s suburbs.
Vasylenko said that “10-year-old girls” have been found with “vaginal and rectal tears” after being raped, while dead women have been found “with swastika shaped burns.”
The official shared an image of one such Nazi symbol scarred into flesh, insisting it was found on the “tortured body of a raped and killed woman.”
“I’m speechless. My mind is paralyzed with anger and fear and hatred,” she said. “Russian Men did this. And Russian mothers raised them. A nation of immoral criminals,” she wrote.
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“The ‘good’ Russians are burning their passports and no longer wish to be called Russian. The rest are Putin accomplices. And guilty of genocide of the Ukrainian nation,” she wrote.
The dead include yet another mayor of a Kyiv suburb, this time in Hostomel — where the body was left out in public and rigged with explosives, the local archpriest told the Times of London.
Archpriest Piotr Pavlenko said he rushed to retrieve the body of Mayor Yriy Pzylyko, his friend, when a turncoat Russian soldier warned him, “Don’t touch the body or it will explode and you’ll blow up with it.”
Another member of parliament, Oleksandr Yurchenko, also told the UK paper that “women were raped, children were shot, people’s bodies were run over.”
“We keep finding bodies,” the MP said, calling it “like a horror movie.”
In neighboring Bucha, where disturbing images of bodies in the street emerged over the weekend, a local priest told the Telegraph that they had no choice but to use mass graves, where bodies remain in black trash bags.
“We brought people here from the streets because the dogs were trying to eat the bodies,” Father Andriy Holovin told the outlet.
“The hospital near here has run out of space. There was no space in the morgue. Now a lot of relatives are searching for their family members, but we couldn’t see a lot of the faces due to injuries.”
The UK paper said it saw at least half a dozen civilian vehicles that crashed under heavy gunfire — some soaked in blood and at least one with a large sign reading “child” in Ukrainian.
Zelensky ended his address Tuesday with a graphic video compilation showing bodies of Ukrainian civilians in Irpin and Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, in Dymerka outside of Chernihiv, and the port city of Mariupol.
The disturbing footage showed some of the bodies buried in mass graves while others were simply strewn on the street or had apparently fallen from nearby bicycles. Some had obvious wounds, while others were burned or dismembered.
“Speaking in my national capacity, we are appalled by what we have seen, and reiterate our solidarity with Ukraine,” Barbara Woodward, the UK’s ambassador to the UN and president of the Security Council said in response.
The US Ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday also blasted the invaders for funneling Ukrainians through “filtration camps” to Russia.
“I do not need to spell out what these so-called “filtration camps” are reminiscent of. It’s chilling and we cannot look away,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said addressing the Security Council.
“Every day, we see more and more how little Russia respects human rights,” she said.
The horrific reports have led many Western leaders to join Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in decrying the atrocities as “genocide.”
However, Russia continues to deny attacking civilians, claiming that the scenes are staged by Ukraine as propaganda to intensify opposition to the Kremlin’s bloody war.
