KIEV

- Hardly a week passes on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, when the sounds of detonation operations are heard, which emergency teams are still finding to this day, more than 3 months after the withdrawal of Russian forces.

Almost every day, new images of the tragedies left by the battles there, and stories of survivors of death recount the horror of the days they lived under bombing, torture and liquidation.

A woman cries one of her relatives in the Erbin cemetery after the end of the battles (Al-Jazeera)

Between exhuming bodies and burying others

In Hostomel, Oleksiy spoke to Al Jazeera Net about what he saw. He said, "My crippled father could not be evacuated, so I decided to stay no matter what. Then my wife and children refused to leave without me, so we all stayed for long weeks in the basement of the house, holding on to the hope of a miracle to survive."

He added, "We were cut off early from water, electricity and communications, so I used to go out with great caution to search for water and food, and then I went out at every relative calm to bury my neighbors and others in the area, and this is how I learned how to bury the dead."

He stressed that "the Russian bombardment with artillery and aircraft was indiscriminate and did not distinguish between a house and a tank. Its aim was to destroy and spread terror to evacuate the city of its residents and soldiers together," he said.

Only rubble remains (the island)

Torture, liquidation, and "Hole" killer

In the nearby city of Irbin, Al Jazeera met Ihor Karpishin, or "Omar", who converted to Islam many years ago, the second of the two who remained in their neighborhood in the city center during the bombing and battles, and took upon themselves the process of exhuming and burying the bodies.

He says, "I hardly left the city with my family, and then I returned with the intention of fighting, but my friend who is responsible for mobilization in the Regional Defense Forces refused, because I have several children. I called my neighbor, the representative in the local council, offering to help when necessary, and so we worked together on the burial and its return, with documentation As much as possible".

He explained, "We used to bury the bodies that we found in homes and streets, trying to identify their owners, but hundreds of bodies remained unidentified, and a private cemetery was assigned to them - later. We have to bury some in the old graves of their relatives because of the dangers and the narrowness of some places."

"We found many old people dead because of fear, and many young men and women were killed under torture, because the Russians accused them of working and communicating with the Ukrainian forces, including well-known local officials," he added.

In the same context, he added, "they would cut off their fingers and other parts of their bodies, suffocate them by wrapping their faces with tape, or collect them tied back and blindfolded, and then line them up in the surrounding parks and forests."

He also pointed out that the Russians and "Chechenyu Kadyrov" (as they are called in Ukraine) were breaking into and stealing home belongings, raping women, and doing whatever they wanted without any religious and moral scruples," he said.

The effects of the widespread destruction caused by the Russian bombing on the outskirts of Kyiv (Al-Jazeera)

Life ended or started from scratch

Although the battles ended and life slowly returned to normal, Ihor stood daily for long minutes contemplating the ruins of his demolished house, with the industrial workshop in which he slept in its "fortified pit", and the warehouse that contained it.

He told Al Jazeera Net, "A shell fell on a kindergarten adjacent to my house where I was, so I quickly went out, and minutes later my house was directly targeted, everything was burned, even the huge iron plates in the workshop melted, and all the perfume bottles that I was selling melted in the warehouse except for a prayer rug I left In a room in the middle of the house.

Sadly, he says, "The war ended the lives of entire families, and others faced a new reality that required them to build life from scratch. Before the war, my most important project was to marry my eldest son and help him build a house, but my biggest concern today is the existence of a house that will accommodate me with my family in the event of their return."

Ukrainian officials vowed to prosecute Russia for what they considered war crimes (Al-Jazeera)

Ukrainian vows to prosecute Russia

In the city of Irbin alone, a new cemetery was formed, containing 1,260 graves, and another containing dozens of graves of unidentified victims, and this leads to the "war crimes" that Kyiv counts and threatens to prosecute Russia before the international court.

The Public Prosecution Office of Ukraine says that it has counted and documented - so far - more than 22,500 crimes committed by Russia against the country and citizens, including - according to the Ukrainian prosecutor - cases of "rape, torture and deliberate killing of thousands of civilians, forcibly displacing more than 1.5 million to Russia, and detention Tens of thousands of adults are in liquidation camps, and thousands of children are kidnapped, especially from orphanages."

The list also includes the bombing of thousands of residential buildings, homes and infrastructure of health care, cultural and educational institutions, transportation and others.

According to statements and statements of a number of ministries and officials this July, 1,300 bodies of civilians killed intentionally or under torture were found in the Kyiv region, and more than 1,600 unidentified bodies were found throughout Ukraine.

Government data also indicate the destruction of 125 institutions and damage to about two thousand other educational institutions, the destruction of 122 Ukrainian medical institutions, the killing of 14 medical workers and the injury of 48 others, in addition to what was described as 417 war crimes against the Ukrainian cultural heritage, and the displacement and asylum of more than 14 million people moved to other regions or countries, and more than 800,000 Ukrainians lost their homes due to the war.

In his last statement before an international conference to be held on July 14 and 15 in The Hague to activate an international case trying Russia, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stressed that "the earth - in the literal sense - will burn under the feet of the Russians, not only on the battlefronts, but also in court sessions." guilty of crimes against Ukrainians," he said.