Ukraine News – live: Zelensky says Borodyanka atrocities worse than Bucha as more sanctions imposed on Russia

According to the latest British military intelligence report, the Kremlin has completely withdrawn its forces from northern Ukraine.

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the soldiers are now in Belarus and Russia. Many of them would be diverted to the battlefields of eastern Ukraine, she added.

Because they need “significant replenishment,” the shift will take at least a week, the Defense Department said.

Ukraine intends to set up as many as 10 humanitarian corridors on Friday, the day after evacuating 4,676 civilians from Ukrainian cities.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said the evacuation routes were all in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Trapped citizens in Mariupol will need private vehicles to escape the besieged city after buses failed to reach them. According to the mayor, more than 5,000 civilians were killed there during the six-week siege.

Three mass graves were found in the Kiev suburb of Bucha after the recapture by Russian troops, the mayor said.

Anatoly Fedoruk said 320 bodies had been recovered as of Wednesday, adding that the death toll is likely to rise in the coming days.

Most of the victims were shot, he said, and the bodies were thrown “like firewood” in community graves.

This comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the situation in the nearby town of Borodyanka was “significantly more dire” than Bucha.

As we mentioned in a previous post, Russia has admitted to suffering “significant casualties” in Ukraine.

Without specifying the number of dead Russian troops, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the casualties were a “great tragedy for us.”

Since the war began on February 24, Moscow has released only a few updates on the death toll. His latest said 1,351 Russian soldiers had been killed in action.

However, the Ukrainian army believes the real number may be as high as 18,900.

European Council President Charles Michel has proposed a proposal to release an additional 500 million euros for arms sales to Ukraine, he reported The Kiev Independent.

In addition, the Canadian government announced on Thursday that it will offer Ukraine up to $1 billion in new loan funds through the International Monetary Fund and provide an additional $500 million in military aid.

A total of 163 bodies of people killed by Russian soldiers in Bucha have been identified, said the mayor of the Ukrainian city, Anatoliy Fedoruk.

Officials had said they collected 320 bodies of killed Ukrainians after Russian troops left Bucha, but not before allegedly carrying out killings.

The mayor added that the number of bodies found in the city every day continues to increase, The Kyiv Independent reported.

A dead body can talk if you ask it the right questions, Ron Turnbull is fond of saying.

“These people have been treated inhumanely and they will never have a voice,” he says The Independent. “Our job was to give them that voice and find out how they were killed,” says the former Metropolitan Police officer.

Turnbull says it’s “nonsensical” to think that the kind of killings the world witnessed in Bucha were committed by Ukrainians on their own people.

From what he has seen of the incidents, does he believe these are war crimes?

“Without a doubt,” he says. “Without doubt.”

Andrew Buncombe, chief US correspondent, reports on it here:

Six weeks into the war, Russia has admitted that it has suffered a “significant loss” of troops and that its offensive on the neighboring country has not progressed as the Kremlin wanted.

“We have significant troop losses. It is a great tragedy for us,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sky News on Thursday amid steady opposition from Ukraine.

Though Moscow has declined to give an exact figure, Ukrainian authorities have claimed that at least 18,900 Russian soldiers have been killed in combat since the invasion began on February 24 on Thursday.

More gruesome discoveries are likely in the coming days as Russian troops withdraw from parts of Ukraine, the country’s leaders have predicted.

Several streets and towns in the war-torn country are now the scene of wrecked buildings, wrecked cars covered in gray smoke and soot, and mounting civilian casualties.

Despite a Russian withdrawal, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the country was still vulnerable.

Grim images showed dozens queuing to get bread, diapers and essential medicines from vans in front of destroyed schools, now converted into an aid distribution center.

The UK Ministry of Defense said in its latest intelligence update that Russian forces have pulled out of the north and retreated into Belarus and Russia.

However, the offensive is expected to continue in the east and south of the besieged country.

“In the north, Russian forces have now fully withdrawn from Ukraine to Belarus and Russia. At least some of these forces will be transferred to eastern Ukraine to fight in Donbass,” the Defense Ministry said.

It added: “Many of these forces will need significant increases before they are ready to move further east, with any mass redeployment from the north likely to take at least a week.”

“Russian shelling of cities to the east and south continues, and Russian forces have advanced further south from the strategically important city of Izium, which remains under their control,” the latest intelligence update said.