- Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said officials have found 900 civilian bodies in mass graves thus far in areas surrounding
Kyiv . - The body count amounts from mass graves located throughout the Kyiv Oblast, which was under Russian occupation last month.
Nine hundred bodies have been discovered in mass graves thus far in areas surrounding the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv, President
Serhiy Nikiforov, a spokesperson for Zelenskyy, told $4 that the Ukrainian leader initially misspoke in an interview with $4 earlier Friday when he claimed the single grave contained all 900 bodies.
Though a new mass grave was uncovered in the Kyiv Oblast, the number Zelenskyy mentions represents all bodies uncovered at mass graves around Kyiv, Nikiforov said.
The region was under Russian occupation last month until troops $4 in early April. The Russian forces had spent six weeks trying to capture the capital since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of the country.
As of Wednesday, the United Nations estimated nearly 6,000 civilian casualties in
During an address to the Estonian parliament earlier this month, Zelenskyy estimated that
"We have to find all these people," he said, "but we don't even know how many there are."
Vlad Perovskyi, a coroner working in Kyiv, told $4 last week that $4 in the capital city because morgues couldn't process them quickly enough.
"These morgues were not designed to handle this amount of bodies," Perovskyi said.
Perovskyi said he's performing as many as 10 autopsies a day — only performing internal examinations if the cause of death is unclear from the superficial wounds sustained by the body.
"I'm used to seeing horrible things done to bodies, but I was very shocked to see such horrible treatment of the deceased by the Russians," Perovskyi said. "How can someone shoot a person and then run over the body? Or throw them into ditches. How can someone put a bullet into a dead man's head?"
Earlier this month, another mass grave containing $4 was discovered in $4, a suburb of Kyiv about 23 miles northwest of the capital. Images and footage of the mass graves shocked the world, prompting global leaders to condemn the alleged civilian killings in Bucha.
Satellite images captured $4 as Russian forces ramps up its assault in eastern Ukraine since withdrawing from the capital.
Editor's note: Zelenskyy initially claimed a new mass grave was found containing hundreds of bodies. His spokesperson later backtracked and corrected his earlier statement.