Days start early for SOS Vostok driver Vlad Savchenko, 48, of Slovyansk. He is one of several drivers for SOS, a Czech based NGO, risking his life in war torn Ukraine to help evacuate the elderly and disabled and those unable to flee hard hit areas. As fighting rages in southern Ukraine, volunteer medics are helping to evacuate the last civilians in the Donbass region as a new offensive from Russian forces looms. Millions of elderly and disabled Ukrainians are ‘at high risk’ because they are unable to flee the fighting. There are more than 7 million people age 60 or older in Ukraine and 2.7 million people with disabilities, according to the EU Disability Forum. Ukraine is trying to evacuate as many trapped civilians as possible, as Russia seeks to entrench a land passage between two separatist, self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donbas and the southern region of Crimea that Russia seized in 2014. Welcome to ‘The LAST to LEAVE’
At least 403 civilian bodies, many of whom were brutally tortured and killed, were discovered in mass graves in Bucha, a once affluent suburb of Kyiv. The grim work now begins in Bucha gathering evidence of possible war crimes by Russian troops. The media tour was intended to show journalists the horrors that Ukrainian forces have uncovered in recent days before investigators remove the bodies and start the careful work of gathering evidence. The forensic process will be necessary to counter the Kremlin’s insistence its forces are not to blame for the deaths of civilians, as Moscow has claimed the atrocities were staged or carried out by Ukrainian forces. Images of the atrocities committed in towns of Irpin and Bucha near Kyiv have drawn condemnation around the world. Ukrainian authorities hope it could influence the western response to the invasion of Ukraine put in motion by Russian president Putin on February 24. Welcome to ‘War Crimes Watch: BUCHA’S HORROR’
