Ukrainian wife cries over body of husband murdered by Russian soldiers

Heartbreaking moment Ukrainian wife’s worst nightmare becomes true as the body of her husband – murdered by Russian soldiers – is found in a shallow grave near their home

  • The grieving widow collapsed on the ground next to her husband’s body in the village of Andriivka, near Kyiv
  • The woman cried as she was held up by Ukrainian police offers in the village where 40 people have been killed
  • Her husband was murdered by Russian soldiers before they were driven out from village by Ukrainian forces
  • WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Harrowing photographs have emerged of a wife crying and collapsing in grief after the body of her husband, who was murdered by Russian soldiers, was exhumed from a shallow grave near their home.

The grieving widow could be seen collapsing on the ground next to her husband’s body, which was placed on a blue sheet, in the village of Andriivka, near Kyiv, on Monday.

The woman, who has not been identified, could be seen crying as she was held up by Ukrainian police officers in the village where 40 people have been killed by Russian soldiers.

Her husband, who was murdered by Russian soldiers before they were driven out by Ukrainian forces, was pictured lifeless – still wearing his jeans and striped top.

Harrowing photographs have emerged of a wife crying and collapsing in grief after the body of her husband, who was murdered by Russian soldiers, was exhumed from a shallow grave near their home

The grieving widow could be seen collapsing on the ground next to her husband’s body, which was placed on a blue sheet, in the village of Andriivka, near Kyiv, on Monday

The woman, who has not been identified, could be seen crying as she was held up by Ukrainian police officers in the village where 40 people have been killed by Russian soldiers

A communal worker exhumes a body of the husband who was buried near his house in Andriivka village on Monday

The heartbroken wife is among dozens of civilians in Andriivka who have lost their loved ones at the hands of Russian troops. 

Among them is the family of 23-year-old Anton Ischenko, who was murdered and mutilated so badly by Vladimir Putin’s men that his relatives were forced to identify his dead body by his clothes.

‘He was a very nice boy, very clever – he recited poetry,’ Anton’s grandmother Tetiana told the BBC.

‘Maybe if he had gone to fight somewhere else, he would have returned her in one piece,’ Tetiana said as tears rolled down her face. 

‘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’.’

Tetiana, who has only now been able to bury her grandchild, added: ‘We wanted to bury him separately and with a priest, not just in a mass grave,’ she says. ‘I had two daughters, so he was our boy. We only had one boy.’

The heartbroken wife is among dozens of civilians in Andriivka who have lost their loved ones at the hands of Russian troops

Communal workers exhume the body of a killed civilian buried in the yard of his house in Andriivka on Monday

Residents in the village of Andriivka have seen bloody battles and their houses and buildings destroyed. After the Russian troops retreated to refocus their efforts on eastern Ukraine, some civilians are beginning to return, or emerge from bomb shelters.

Grigoriy Klymenko, who remained in the village to be with his bedridden 90-year-old mother, said the Russians are ‘animals’. 

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

Next door, Leonid Koval and his son’s home was destroyed by Russian troops. ‘I don’t know what they were looking for,’ he said as he broke down in tears. ‘They just destroyed everything. I have no words to describe what they did.’ 

Ukraine and Western leaders have accused Russian forces of committing atrocities against civilians in devastated areas around Kyiv that were under Russian occupation, including the town of Bucha.

Communal workers exhume a body of a man buried near his house in Andriivka village

Ukrainian authorities say over 1,200 bodies have been found in the area so far and that they are weighing cases against ‘500 suspects’, including Putin and other top Russian officials.  

In Bucha on Monday, the work of exhuming bodies from a mass grave in a churchyard resumed after more than 400 dead civilians were discovered. The majority had been gunned down.   

Galyna Feoktistova waited for hours in the cold and rain in hopes of identifying her 50-year-old son, who was shot and killed more than a month ago, but eventually she went home for some warmth. ‘He’s still there,’ her surviving son, Andriy, said.

In Buzova, a village in the Kyiv region, Ukrainian officials said the bodies of 50 people, all of whom were shot at close range, were discovered on a road. Another mass grave with dozens of bodies were also found in the village.

Taras Didych, head of the Dmytrivka community that includes Buzova and several other nearby villages, told Ukrainian television that some of the bodies were found in a ditch near a petrol station. The number of dead is yet to be confirmed.

‘Now, we are returning to life, but during the occupation we had our ‘hotspots’, many civilians died,’ Didych said.  

The bodies of 132 civilians were also found shot dead in Makariv, a town in Kyiv Oblast and about 30 miles west of the capital at the weekend. All died from bullet wounds, the town’s mayor said. 

Roughly 40 per cent of the town has been destroyed, according to reports, which came after Ukrainian troops recaptured it from Russian occupation on March 22. Officials have been counting the dead ever since.

Similar scenes have been found in the nearby town of Bucha, where more than 400 dead civilians were discovered. The majority had also been gunned down.

The mass killing of civilians Ukraine have been widely condemned by the West as war crimes with piles of bodies showing signs of torture and execution were pictured in Bucha after the city had been recaptured by Ukrainian forces.

But officials have now revealed that even greater damage was done by Putin’s thugs in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv and about 15 miles from Bucha. 

Russian forces are now turning their focus to the Donbas region in the east, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian troops were preparing ‘even larger operations’.

Russia is believed to be seeking a link between occupied Crimea and Moscow-backed separatist territories Donetsk and Lugansk in Donbas.

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