9:28 p.m. ET, April 4, 2022
Ukraine's deputy prime minister: If we don't stop Putin, "this is only the beginning of those atrocities"
From CNN's Jason Kurtz
A
group of eleven Ukrainian city mayors continue to be held captive by Russian forces, Ukraine's deputy prime minister reiterated on Monday.
“This is absolutely true. We know that all of the city mayors, they are in captivity, they're being held hostage by Russians, they are unfortunately are not giving them back to us,” Iryna Vereshchuk told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.
“Unfortunately, so far, we have not been able to get in touch, or to free any other city mayors, and we don't even know, we think that some of them were killed," she said, speaking via a translator.
On Sunday, in a message posted to social media, Vereshchuk said that 11 local mayors from Kyiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv and the Donetsk regions "are in Russian captivity." CNN could not independently verify those claims. Russian forces have
detained local government officials in a number of instances around Ukraine.
As photos of civilian bodies lining a street in Bucha have quickly become the indelible images of the conflict, Vereshchuk feared further violence.
“If we do not stop Putin today, together, this is only the beginning of those atrocities that we will reveal later on. Because as we are talking now with you, there are ... more than 100,000 civilians, women, children, elderly, who are dying in the city of Mariupol at the moment,” she said.
“People are dying, they are dying of hunger, thirst, severe wounds, airstrikes, thousands of them are being killed. It is a genocide, against the Ukrainian civilians. And Putin, he realizes that he cannot stop the Ukrainian army, and that’s why he has another tactic. He is torturing and raping Ukrainian civilians, women, and this is what's his so-called second army is doing. They are fighting against the civilians, and we seem to just be watching powerless against them.”