In Ukrainian Street, A Corpse With Hands Bound And A Bullet Wound To The Head

A man lay sprawled by the roadside in the Ukrainian city of Bucha on Sunday, his hands tied behind his back and a bullet wound to his head, one of hundreds of local residents that officials say have been found dead in the wake of five weeks of Russian occupation.Bucha's deputy mayor, Taras Shapravskyi, said 50 of the dead residents, found after Russian forces withdrew from the city late last week, were the victims of extra-judicial killings carried out by Russian troops, and the officials have accused Moscow of war crimes.Russia's defence ministry said in a statement issued on Sunday that all photographs and videos published by the Ukrainian authorities alleging 'crimes' by Russian troops in Bucha were a "provocation," and no resident of Bucha suffered violence at the hands of Russian troops.Reuters was not able to independently verify who was responsible for killing the dead residents.But three bodies seen by Reuters reporters on Sunday -- the corpse with the hands bound and two others which did not have bound hands -- bore bullet shots to the head consistent with what Bucha mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk and his deputy described as executions.In all three cases, there were no signs of any other significant injuries elsewhere in the body.

Russian troops, while they were in Bucha, required that local residents wear the armbands to identify themselves, according to one woman who was still wearing hers.Reuters sent questions to the Kremlin and the Russian defence ministry about the corpses that its reporters had witnessed, but received no immediate reply.Russia's defence ministry, in its statement on Sunday said: "During the time that Russian armed forces were in control of this settlement, not a single local resident suffered from any violent actions." It added that before Russian troops withdrew on March 30 they delivered 452 tons of humanitarian aid to civilians around the Kyiv region.Shapravskyi, the deputy mayor, said some 300 people were found dead after the Russian withdrawal.

Of these, he said officials so far have logged 50 as executions carried out by Russian forces.

The Russians have demonstrated that they were consciously killing civilians," Fedoruk, the mayor, said as he showed Reuters reporters one of the bodies.SHALLOW GRAVEReuters also spoke to one local resident who described a person being found dead after Russian troops detained them, and another resident who described two people found dead with single gunshot wounds to the head.Reuters was not able to independently verify the descriptions provided by the residents.Sobbing as she gestured at her husband's shallow grave, a shot of vodka topped with a cracker resting on freshly dug earth, Tetyana Volodymyrivna recounted an ordeal at the hands of Russian troops in this city 37 km (23 miles) northwest of Kyiv.She and her husband, a former Ukrainian marine, were dragged from their apartment when Russian troops set up their command centre in their building.

The soldiers held them prisoner in the apartment building where they lived.She said the Russians, when they arrived in the city, asked people who they were, and demanded to see documents.She said a fighter with the Russian forces who she believed was from Russia's semi-autonomous Chechnya region warned he would "cut us up." She did not say how she knew he was Chechen.Reuters sent a request for comment to the office of the leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, a Kremlin loyalist, but received no reply.Tetyana, who identified herself by her first name and patronymic but did not give her family name, was released after being held for four days.

24 invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces who swept south, capturing the defunct nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and moving southwards toward the capital.Bucha and the northern outskirts of nearby Irpin were the point at which the Russian advance from the northwest was halted after they met with unexpectedly fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces.The area witnessed some of the bloodiest fighting of the battle for the capital, until Russian forces pulled back from north of Kyiv.

When a Reuters reporter visited, boxes of ammunition and spent shell casings littered the ground.Kopachov, a Ukrainian dog breeder, was in mourning.He said his 33-year-old daughter, her boyfriend and a friend were shot dead by Russian troops after firing a party streamer towards them just days before the pullback.