Ukrainian troops re-occupying the Kyiv suburbs after Russian forces pulled back over the weekend found the streets strewn with the bodies of civilians, 280 of whom were buried in a mass grave in the commuter town of Bucha.
One photo circulating online shows the body of a man with his hands bound and an open Ukrainian passport on the ground beside him. A BBC correspondent confirmed that some of the dead men found in the street did have their hands tied behind their backs.
According to BBC News, the Russian Defense Ministry dismissed the photos and videos showing dead civilians as "fake" while also attempting to blame the civilian deaths on Ukrainian airstrikes.
Ukrainian government sources have accused Russian troops of committing war crimes by murdering civilians and using busloads of children as human shields to enable their tanks to withdraw safely from the towns surrounding Kyiv, according to The Guardian.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian troops had left the Kyiv suburbs riddled with booby traps and land mines, some of which were even placed on or near corpses.
Russia announced plans last week to "reduce military activity" around Kyiv, suggesting that Russia's focus has shifted from capturing Ukraine's capital to seizing territory in the east. American and Ukrainian observers, however, warned that Russian forces were likely regrouping rather than retreating and could launch a renewed assault on Kyiv in the future.