Mayor of Bucha on slain civilians: We ‘get the impression’ Russian troops had ‘green light from Putin’

Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk on Monday said the city has “the impression” that Russian troops received a “green light” from Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to attack citizens in his city.

“They were indiscriminately killed by the Russia occupiers. A lot of them are elderly people. We get the impression that the Russian occupiers have got the green light from Putin and Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, to have a safari in Ukraine,” Fedoruk said during an interview on CNN.

“They weren’t able to take Kyiv so they vented their frustration on Bucha and the surrounding areas,” he added.

Images from Bucha circulated over the weekend depicting bodies on the streets of the Kyiv suburb. One person was photographed with a white cloth tied around their hands behind their back.

Russia, however, is dismissing the photos as “fakes.”

The shocking images have prompted calls for stronger sanctions from a number of countries. They have also drawn widespread condemnation from top international figures.

Fedoruk told CNN on Monday that the city is working on identifying the bodies collected from the streets. He said the city believes it is able to identify roughly 50 percent of the recovered bodies, all of whom are Ukrainian citizens from Bucha and surrounding towns.

The mayor said some children and teenagers have also been killed in the city. He called the acts “cynical atrocities” and said Russia should never be forgiven for the killings.

“They pose no threat to the Russian troops … Russia as a whole. They did pose absolutely no danger,” Fedoruk said.

“And it was impossible not to see that they were children, not to see that a mother is carrying a child. And this cynical, these cynical atrocities is what the Russian troops are all about. That’s what Russia is all about. And we shall never forgive them. They will never be forgiven on this Earth or in heaven,” he added.

Asked if he is worried that other Ukrainian cities and towns will see a similar situation in other Ukrainian towns and cities, Fedoruk said “I think we can expect to see the same picture on the entire territory from Kyiv to Mariupol and Kherson.”

“They cannot make progress militarily, the Ukrainian Armed Forces stopped them, so they are torturing civilians. And this is how they are performing, this is the so-called denazification that Russian, that the Russian President Putin mentioned, but it’s actually dehumanization of Ukrainians,” he added.