After meeting Putin in Moscow, UN head views destruction wrought in Borodyanka by Kremlin’s military

“I think of my own family living in one of these houses, now ruined and all in black,” said Guterres.

Read also: Russians shot civilians that were rescuing others from rubble in Borodyanka

“I can imagine my grandchildren running away to find refuge, in panic. In the 21 century the war just can’t be accepted.”

Guterres was in Ukraine after paying a visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Borodyanka was chosen as a site for the UN Secretary General to visit as it’s a widely known as place where Russian war crimes took place.

Read also: Bucha shuts the door on dialogue with Russia, Zelensky says

Russian armed forces focused their offensive operation in Kyiv Oblast during the first weeks of the war, in a failed attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian government and replace it with a puppet regime. But the Russian offensive became bogged down, and the Kremlin’s troops were brought to a halt in Borodyanka and other towns to the north-west of Kyiv.

While there, the Russian army committed savage atrocities against civilians, the world discovered after Kyiv Oblast was liberated on April 2.

Defeated and in retreat, the Russian army left mines in the ground and on dead bodies, unburied.

Ukrainian photographers recorded images of the dead bodies in Bucha, Irpin and other locations along the Kyiv – Zhytomyr highway during the first day after the Russian army’s retreat. Some of the bodies, in the same positions on the road, were also spotted in satellite imagery of the towns acquired at the time they were still under occupation.

Read also: Russian invaders damage over 1,000 buildings in Irpin, says mayor

Iryna Venedyktova, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, said that most of those killed in Kyiv Oblast were residents of Borodyanka. This town hosts an R&D facility for analyzing biological problems for the needs of agriculture industry (so called Instytut ekspertyzy sortiv roslyn) as well as firms who provide auto repair services.

After surviving a month of Russian occupation, Borodyanka, which doesn’t host any military facilities, was reduced to ruins: eight multistoried buildings out of the town’s 29 were destroyed, the remaining 21 are severely damaged.