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A man shot dead in the head when he tells Russian soldiers that he has no tobacco while being held with his wife in their own basement.

A couple taken from their house and shot in the street: "My father had six large holes in his back, my mother had a smaller hole in her chest."

Three men attacked by snipers while driving a car loaded with food and drugs towards a shelter full of civilians.

A woman repeatedly raped at gunpoint after witnessing her husband's murder.

A group of people gunned down by snipers while looking for food in a destroyed store...

... These are some of the testimonies of some twenty witnesses and survivors collected on the ground in recent weeks by Amnesty International (AI) researchers in villages and towns near

Kiev,

the new chapter in the documentation of infamy.

"Russian forces have extrajudicially executed civilians in Ukraine in apparent

war crimes

. The intentional killing of civilians is a human rights violation and a war crime. These deaths must be fully investigated and those responsible must be brought to justice, including the chain of command".

These are the words of Agnes Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, presenting the organization's latest report on Thursday after those published with evidence of civilians killed in indiscriminate attacks in Kharkiv and Sumy Oblast, the airstrike that killed several people queuing to getting food in Chernihiv and the men, women and children living under siege in Kharkov, Izium and Mariupol.

The document is a collection of horror, an overwhelming tour of the surroundings of the Ukrainian capital during the first weeks of

the Russian invasion

in its most inhumane aspect: the one that targets unarmed civilians.

As Amnesty says, a sign that this population "is being killed in their homes and streets in

acts of unspeakable cruelty and shocking brutality."

deliberate homicides

We speak of "deliberate killings, unlawful violence and widespread intimidation by Russian forces."

And these are, according to Amnesty International, the evidence:

Russian tanks had been in Bohdanivka, a town near kyiv, for a couple of days.

On the night of March 9, a 46-year-old woman, her husband, her 10-year-old daughter, and her mother-in-law heard gunshots through their windows.

She and her husband yelled at the soldiers that they were civilians and unarmed, but the Russian soldiers entered the house and put the woman and her husband in the boiler room.

"They forced us in and slammed the door. After just a minute they opened the door, asked my husband if he had any cigarettes. He said no, he hadn't smoked for a couple of weeks. He was shot in the right arm. The other He said, 'Finish him,' and they shot him in the head."

The man did not die immediately.

He agonized for six and a half hours,

with his wife next to him.

"I begged... 'If you can hear me, please move your finger.' I said, 'Looks like Dad's dead.

Kateryna Tkachova is 18 years old and on March 3 she was with her parents at home when Russian tanks with the letter 'Z' broke into Vorzel.

Her parents told Kateryna to stay in the basement and went outside.

Immediately, the girl heard shots. "Once the tanks passed, I jumped the fence of the neighbor's house. I wanted to check if they were alive. I looked over the fence and saw my mother lying on her back on the side of the road , and my father face down across the street. I saw big holes in his coat. The next day I went to see them.

My father had six big holes in his back

and my mother had a smaller hole in her chest." The Amnesty report says that a volunteer involved in the evacuation of the area around kyiv helped Kateryna write down the names of the girl's parents and their dates of birth. and death on a piece of cardboard that they placed next to their bodies, which they covered with blankets.

In Hostomel, Taras Kuzmak had been transporting food and medicine to civilians hiding in air-raid shelters for days.

On March 3, he was with the mayor, Yuryi Prylypko, and two other men when they were shot by Russian forces.

One of the men, Ivan Zorya, was killed instantly and the others tried to get out of the car.

The mayor was injured, but was able to hide with Taras behind a bulldozer.

Russian snipers

were shooting at them for hours.

"I could only hear the mayor. I knew he was wounded, but I didn't know if it was fatal or not. I just told him to stay put, not to make a move... We were shot at again around 3 p.m., and about half an hour later." hour after that, I understood that there was no life in him. There is a kind of breath that someone has just before they die, their last breath. Ivan Zorya had his head cut off, I think they must have been using something high caliber, " Taras Kuzmak told AI.

Also on March 9, Russian soldiers entered a woman's home in a town east of kyiv.

"Her husband was killed and then repeatedly raped at gunpoint while her young son was hiding in a nearby boiler room."

extrajudicial executions

In Bucha, the city in which dozens of cases of extrajudicial executions have been reported this week, Milena told Amnesty International that she saw the body of a woman lying in front of her house.

That woman's mother told Milena that her daughter was shot while she was looking over her fence at a Russian military vehicle.

Sheriy Zakhliupanyy, 39, decided to stay in Hostomel for the first days of the invasion.

His parents had run away and talked to him every day until he stopped answering them. "When they asked the neighbors, they said that on March 13 the Russians took my son from the cellar. When they went to look for Serhiy, they found him behind from the garages in the same building...they said

he had been shot in the head,"

deSheriy's father told AI.

The report also recounts the experiences of survivors living under threat and intimidation from Russian forces.

In Hostomel, a man recounted that

he saw an entire dormitory of people sheltering from the bombing.

They were forced out and the Russian officers immediately fired shots over their heads, forcing them to the ground.

And two men from Bucha told AI that they were regularly shot by snipers when they went to retrieve food from a destroyed grocery store near their home.

Amnesty International: "The deliberate killings of civilians,

rape, torture and inhumane treatment

of prisoners of war are human rights violations and war crimes. Those who directly commit war crimes should be held criminally responsible for them. According to the doctrine of command responsibility, hierarchical superiors, including commanders and civilian leaders, such as ministers and heads of state, who knew or had reason to know of war crimes committed by their forces but did not attempt to stop or punish those responsible , should also be held criminally responsible".

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