Ukraine mayor, family kidnapped by Russian forces found dead, tortured in shallow grave: Ukrainian officials

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The bodies of the mayor of a Ukrainian village outside Kyiv and her husband and adult son were reportedly found in a shallow grave after the three were abducted by Russian occupying forces. 

Mayor of the Village of Motyzhyn, Olga Sukhenko, was "unfortunately killed in captivity by the Russians," Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed.

"This is a war crime," Vereshchuk said in an address of Sukhenko’s killing. "The guilty will inevitably be punished in accordance with international humanitarian law." 

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Vereshchuk said there are 11 mayors and community heads in Russian captivity across Ukraine, including leaders from Kyiv, Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Donetsk regions. 

"We are informing about them and about other captive civilians to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations and other international organizations," Vereshchuk added about the others missing. "We demand everyone on whom it depends to do everything possible to make sure our civilians, our mayors, our clergymen, journalists activist are released."  

Disturbing photos purportedly showed the bodies of Sukhenko, her husband, Ihor, and their footballer son, Oleksandr, lying in a pit behind a plot of land with three houses that Russian forces had used as makeshift barracks outside the village of Motyzhyn. Other unidentified bodies were found buried nearby. 

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A resident of Motyzhyn, about 31 miles west of Kyiv, previously told The Associated Press, the mayor was killed in an execution-style slaying along with her husband and son. The three had been reported by others as kidnapped by Russians on March 23 and were taken in an unknown direction.

A second resident of that town told the AP on Sunday that Russian troops targeted local officials in a bid to win them over and killed them if they did not collaborate.

Anton Herashchenko, former deputy minister at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal affairs, condemned how Russian occupying forces had "tortured and murdered the whole family of the village head."

"The occupiers suspected they were collaborating with our military, giving us locations of where to target our artillery," he said, according to The Telegraph. "These scum tortured, slaughtered and killed the whole family. They will be responsible for this."

Sukhenko showed "signs of torture," the mayor of the neighboring village of Kopyliv told The Telegraph, noting how her arms and fingers had been broken. Vadym Tokar, the head of the village council of Makariv, which also neighbors Motyzhyn, told the newspaper the bodies were initially left lying in the pit and "we can't get them out because there is a suspicion that they are mined."

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Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktova said Sunday that the bodies of 410 civilians have been retrieved from Bucha, the neighboring towns of Irpin and Hostomel and smaller villages around Kyiv after Russian forced pulled back from the region surrounding the capital in recent days. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.