COMMENT | After the Russian troops were forced to withdraw from the Kyiv area, Ukrainian forces liberated the small town of Bucha.

It soon became the symbolic embodiment of the brutalities of the Russian occupation of Ukraine. Hundreds of civilian inhabitants were massacred, tied and shot at the back of the head; women were raped and mutilated. Even children were not spared. Their sanatorium was converted by Russians into a mass rape-cum-torture chamber.

As the Ukrainian army continues to liberate their country, new evidence of more heinous crimes is emerging: families shot dead in their cars while fleeing to safety or flattened by Russian tanks with their passengers inside and completely ruined cities like Mariupol, in which tens of thousands are known to have been killed by massive Russian shelling.

There is mounting evidence of mass robberies by Russian troops breaking into shops, private houses and flats, stealing TV sets, smartphones, notebooks, refrigerators, washing machines, sinks and taps, toilets, pressure cookers, and even dog kennels.

Hundreds of destroyed Russian army trucks and armoured vehicles litter the muddy fields and rust along the roads, full of stolen quilts, cutlery, toys, toiletries, and dresses.

Russia's "liberation and denazification of Ukraine" looks more like an expedition by a mediaeval robber-baron than a modern, civilised (if one could call war civilised at all) fighting force