Over 10,000 civilians were killed by the Russian army since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the head of the War Crimes Department in Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office, Yurii Belousov, said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to Yurii Belousov, the War Crimes Department in Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has identified 10,749 civilians killed, including 499 kids, and 15,599 wounded, including 1,900 children.
“We understand that these figures are just the tip of the iceberg. When we de-occupy our territories, the numbers will increase many times, and possibly tenfold,” Yurii Belousov said.
Belousov suggested that in Mariupol alone, reduced to rubble during the Russian siege in the spring of 2022, “there will be tens of thousands of dead.”
He also added that law enforcement officers do their best to identify all the victims of the invading Russian troops. However, identifying all the victims is difficult because "the Russians could rebury them, take them away," and it is often impossible to find all the bodies, according to Belousov.
At the same time, the head of the War Crimes Department added that the body identification system improved significantly thanks to Ukraine’s allies and partners. The number of laboratories and the ability to analyze DNA is incomparable to what used to be in Ukraine before the full-scale Russian invasion started.
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