Neighbors in villages east of Kiev’s capital have reported finding their neighbors buried in shallow graves for more than a month following Russian soldiers’ forced withdrawal from that area.
“Sometimes, I have nightmares and can’t sleep at night,” Serhiy Yudenko told CNN’s Matthew Chance. “I pray they won’t ever come back.” Yudenko said he was shot by Russian soldiers and left for dead. He now has scars from the bullets but says the emotional scars run deeper.
He said that he would never forgive the Russians for what they had done.
More than three hundred people are still missing from the region, according to Ukrainian officials. Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin told reporters that every time searchers find a new body, he thinks of the families of the deceased.
Standing next to the grave, Yenin said, “You cannot imagine the eyes of mothers whose children they lost. You cannot imagine the eyes of relatives whose beloved have been captured or have been killed on the front line.”
