'It is a war crime' - Mayor of small Ukraine town says retreating Russians killed 300 people 

Photographs from the town showed a scene of devastation, with hunks of charred and destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles lined up along one street, along with dozens of dead bodies

A Ukrainian serviceman checks the dead body of a civilian for booby traps in the formerly Russian-occupied Kyiv suburb of Bucha, Ukraine. Picture: AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda

The retreat of Russian forces around Kyiv has left horrifying evidence of atrocities against civilians littered across the region’s suburbs and towns, turned into hellish war zones by Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

As Ukrainian armoured columns rolled into Bucha, a town north-west of the capital, they found streets blocked by burned-out Russian tanks and military vehicles, and strewn with the bodies of civilians whom locals said had been killed by the invading forces without provocation.