‘We weren’t prepared for this’: Kyiv area morgues at breaking point

Ukrainian coroners and morgue staff are struggling to keep up with the number of casualties, bodies piled in refrigerated trucks

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The first body arrived in late February, a few days after the Russian invasion began. The next day, two more. By the beginning of March, the morgue, on the outskirts of Kyiv, had no more space for the dead who, every day, arrived by the dozen from the cities of Bucha and Borodyanka - at the time occupied by the Russian forces.

When Moscow's withdrawal from the areas north of the capital early in April unveiled the brutality of mass graves, with hundreds of civilian corpses buried in residential districts, every morgue in the Kyiv region was already at breaking point.