Ukraine's President delivers a graphic description of Russian atrocities in a hard-hitting speech to the UN Security Council

The Ukrainian town of

Residents look for belongings in the ruins of an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine, on April 5.
Residents look for belongings in the ruins of an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine, on April 5. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)

Borodyanka has been completely destroyed by fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces, new videos show. 

CNN has geolocated and verified the authenticity of the videos that were first published on Tuesday. 

On March 1, a Russian airstrike destroyed at least two apartment complexes in Borodyanka; it was the first report of damage in the village roughly 30 miles — 50 kilometers — northwest of Kyiv.  

Since then, the town has been the site of intense firefights and military strikes. Drone footage from March 4 shows the middle of another apartment complex collapsed into a heap of rubble from a military. Video posted to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s Telegram channel showed his fighters walking the streets of the village around that time.  

CNN previously reported that Russian forces took temporary control of a psychiatric hospital — it held nearly 700 patients — in Borodyanka on March 5.  

At the time, regional governor Oleksiy Kuleba said that the village had no water or electricity. 

“There is no Borodyanka — it is almost completely destroyed,” Kuleba said. “The city center is just awful. Borodyanka is under the influence of Russian troops, they control this settlement.” 

Now that Russian forces have retreated, the full scope of destruction is coming into view.  

“There is already information that the number of victims of the occupiers may be even higher in Borodyanka and some other liberated cities,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Monday. In many villages of the liberated districts of the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, the occupiers did things that the locals had not seen even during the Nazi occupation 80 years ago.” 

The complete and total destruction seen in the videos from Borodyanka is only comparable to the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol. 

Both videos start near the two apartment complexes that CNN reported were hit on March 1. Every single building along Lenina Street — the main thoroughfare through the town — has been hit. 

Entire village blocks have been reduced to rubble. The burnt metal frames of military vehicles are also seen on the side of the debris-littered road. 

A crude sign — it’s just spray-painted sheet metal — reads, “Civilian traffic is prohibited.”  

source: cnn.com