French police officers arrived in Ukraine on Monday to help the country investigate alleged Russian war crimes after hundreds of civilian bodies were discovered in towns around Kyiv, the French ambassador to Ukraine said.
“Proud to welcome to Lviv the detachment of technical and scientific gendarmes who came to assist their comrades in investigations of war crimes committed near Kyiv,” Etienne de Poncins said on Twitter.
“France is the first to provide such help. They will start work tomorrow.”
He posted a photo of around 20 uniformed investigators standing by a mobile laboratory van in the western city of Lviv.
Ukraine has vowed to find and identify those behind civilian killings in the Kyiv region and has called for international help in doing so.
The country’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said Sunday that Kyiv discovered 1,222 bodies near the capital in areas from where the Russian army recently retreated.
She also said Ukraine is probing 5,600 alleged war crimes involving “500 suspects” from Russia’s government and military.
Images of the dead civilians in towns like Bucha and Irpin near Kyiv have shocked the world.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he created a special mechanism to investigate Russian “crimes” in Ukraine, which includes “national and international experts.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron has said there are “clear indications” of Russian war crimes near Kyiv.
Moscow denies this, with President Vladimir Putin accusing Ukraine of staging the civilian deaths.
© Agence France-Presse
