Mayor of Bucha to CNN: Atrocities in His City Show Putin Gave ‘Green Light’ to ‘Have a Safari’

Anatoly Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, Ukraine, gave a haunting interview to CNN where he described the grim aftermath of Russia’s occupation of his city.

The Ukrainian military recently liberated the Kyiv suburb from Russia’s invading troops occupying it. The town was decimated amid the fighting, and the Russians left behind a horrifying number of civilians who were executed and reportedly subjected to other kinds of human rights abuses.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the mass killings as the news took off in the media, and Fedoruk spoke to Brianna Keilar on Monday about the city’s initial recovery.

“We are also working on identifying the bodies of the people who were shot dead in our city,” Fedoruk said. “They were indiscriminately killed by the Russian occupiers. A lot of them are elderly people. We get the impression that Russian occupiers got the green light from [Vladimir] Putin and the Russian defense minister to have a safari in Ukraine. And they weren’t able to take Kyiv, so they vented their frustration on Bucha and the surrounding areas.”

Turning to what he and other Bucha residents saw from the Russian occupation, Fedoruk added “We were all witnesses to the horrific event and the horrific crimes that the Russians committed here. And we will never forgive the Russian people. Not personally, not individually, but on the whole, we will not forgive the Russian people for the atrocities that happened here.”

Fedoruk went on by speaking about the efforts to identify the dead and figure out who is still missing. Among the victims, Fedoruk said they included the elderly along with “many children, many teenagers…who posed no threat to the Russian troops, to Russia as a whole. They posed absolutely no danger, and it was impossible not to see that they were children.”

“These cynical atrocities is what Russian troops are all about,” he said. “We shall never forgive them. They will never be forgiven on this Earth or in Heaven.”

Watch above, via CNN.