- According to Politico, Russian soldiers trapped the body of a Ukrainian man in the trunk of his own car.
- His wife discovered his body and then brought in Ukrainian troops to help move him, fearing a trap.
- When they tried to pull it out of the trunk with a rope, the car “exploded in a ball of fire”.
Russian soldiers killed a Ukrainian army volunteer on the outskirts of kyiv and left his body in the trunk of his car fitted with a mine that then exploded when Ukrainian forces tried to move him, according to Politico.
Lyudmyla Kyrpach, the soldier’s widow, told Politico that she and her husband Oleksandr “did everything together”.
Kyrpach told the media that the day after the invasion began in late February, Oleksandr, a mechanic, organized volunteer fighters in his village of Kalynivka, near kyiv.
On March 1, days after Russian troops encroached on their village, Oleksandr’s friends drove out to see if they could get more information on Russian troop movements up close. She told Politico’s Christopher Miller that after they failed to return, he set out to track them down.
“He said he would come back right away,” Lyudmyla told Politico. Oleksandr never returned and, unable to sleep, Lyudmyla left the next day with her friends to find him.
She noticed her sedan on the road, with the keys in the ignition but no passengers in the car, she told Politico.
Lyudmyla’s friend noticed the trunk was riddled with bullets, according to the report, and they opened the trunk to find Oleksandr’s corpse. Her friend pulled her away from the car for fear the trunk would be trapped, she told the outlet.
On March 4, they returned to the scene with Ukrainian soldiers.
According to the report, the soldiers tied ropes to his limbs and moved away from the car to slowly shoot and see if the car was rigged. As soon as they fired, the “car exploded into a ball of fire”. Russian soldiers had placed a weight-triggered mine under Oleksandr, Lyudmyla told Politico.
“Lyudmyla picked up the pieces of the man she spent decades with and put them in a box,” Politico reported. Later, she buried him in the garden where they used to plant vegetables together.
In April, Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Russia’s attacks on civilians went beyond artillery attacks, with officials saying they had discovered booby traps strewn across cities such as Kyiv and Mariupol.
“The Russian Federation is at war not only with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but is also fighting against the civilian population of Ukraine, in flagrant violation of the laws of war,” the statement said. “As Russian military personnel withdraw, they are setting massive booby traps, prohibited by international law, even on food facilities, private accommodation and human corpses.”
Last month, Ukrainian authorities uncovered a mass grave in Bucha, near kyiv, saying Russian soldiers had killed and buried at least 360 Ukrainians in a 45ft-long trench. Journalists who traveled to Bucha after Russian troops withdrew also reported bodies of civilians in their homes, on the street and in the glass factory in the suburbs.