Zelensky Claims Russia Is Abducting And Murdering Ukrainian City Mayors

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Moscow forces of abducting and murdering city officials throughout the country in an interview on Monday at an undisclosed location. Speaking from a fortified government building in Kyiv, the Ukrainian leader claimed Russian troops are targetting city officials and pursuing civilians in retaliation for the failure of their invasion forces.

According to the Mirror, Zelensky made the shocking claim in light of reports on the number of fallen Russian troops and their military tanks being destroyed by Ukrainian forces and civilian resistance. Zelensky said that city mayors are being kidnapped and left for dead while some remain missing. He added that 14 heads of Ukrainian cities were abducted by Russian forces with an undeclared number executed.

“They are kidnapping the mayors of our cities. They killed some of them. We can’t find some of them,” the leader claimed. “We have already found some of them and they are dead.”

As reports on the number of casualties of Russian troops come in, Zelensky pointed out how these abductions and executions are deliberately being done to compensate for the repeated failures to take over several cities in Ukraine. Media reports state that about 17,000 Russian ground forces have been killed since they initiated their attack with 123 planes, 127 helicopters, and 565 of their tanks blown off and rendered inoperable.

On March 7, the Mayor of Hostomel, Yuriy Prylpko was reportedly shot and killed by Russian soldiers while he was delivering bread to trapped residents. The town council posted this on social media where it also said that two other officials who worked with the mayor were also killed.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Irpin, Oleksandr Markushn was reinstated after Ukrainian forces were able to liberate and retake control of the city, which has been one of the hot fighting zones.

The mayor of Mariupol, Vadym Boichenko, on the other hand, has fled his city saying that its people “are beyond the line of humanitarian catastrophe.” He urged residents that they need to completely evacuate Mariupol.

Boichenko said there were 26 buses waiting to evacuate some of the 160,000 trapped civilians however he claimed that Russia was denying their safe passage.