By The Associated Press
As Russia gears up for a major offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Ukrainians took stock Tuesday of the death and destruction the war has wrought.
A man mourned his 82-year-old mother, who died in a retirement home due to sorely deteriorated conditions in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, where the mayor said 403 bodies had been found. Nearby, as another funeral took place, a woman held one hand to her chest while clutching a portrait of Dmytro Stefienko, a 32-year-old civilian killed during the war, with the other.
Elsewhere in Bucha, forensic investigators investigating allegations of war crimes gathered at the site of a mass grave, a gold-domed church looming in the background. Volunteers in white biohazard suits loaded bodies into a truck.
Meanwhile in Kharkiv, Ukrainian firefighters scrambled to put out fires after Russian shelling destroyed a culinary school near the city’s airport.
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