The bodies are strewn across the quiet tree-lined street in the town of Bucha as far as the eye can see.
All 20 are in civilian clothing, and all have their different poses in death. Some lie with sightless eyes staring at Ukraine’s overcast sky, some lie face down on the tarmac.
Three of them are tangled up in bicycles after taking their final ride, while others, with waxy skin, have fallen next to bullet-ridden and crushed cars.
One has his hands tied behind his back with a white cloth, and his Ukrainian passport left open beside his corpse said AFP journalists who accessed the town.
Another lies next to a yellow hoarding spray-painted with happy and sad emojis and the words “Live Fast”.
Russia’s hasty retreat from its occupation of the region around Kyiv is revealing fresh devastation by the day.
“All these people were shot, killed, in the back of the head,” mayor Anatoly Fedoruk told AFP.
Another 280 people have been buried in mass graves in Bucha while the bodies of whole families still lie in shot-up cars, he said.
Surrounded by the pine forests that stretch up to Belarus, Bucha was a picture of sleepy suburbia northwest of the Ukrainian capital until the Russian invasion.
A month of fierce battles in towns like Bucha and nearby Irpin prevented Moscow’s forces from encircling Kyiv some 25 kilometres (14 miles) away.
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