Ukrainian officials have warned of further massacres being committed by Russian forces.
Video / AP
The teenage boys who were pushing their bicycles along one of Borodyanka's torn-up roads on Tuesday afternoon should have been at school.
Instead, they were wandering the streets of their "liberated" hometown in a bid to make sense of what had happened since the Russians invaded their country in late February.
Due to the sheer amount of shattered glass and debris that covered the roads, the boys could not mount their bikes, for fear of puncturing a wheel and having one more thing damaged by the enemy.
"They kidnapped people, they tortured our friend. Some people were abducted, interrogated and taken to Belarus," Nikita, 16, said.
"They occupied our whole town, destroyed our homes and stole food from the citizens. It was hell."
Nikita explained that when the invasion started, the local priest had made an "agreement" with soldiers not to shoot at anyone who wore a white band around their arm, to indicate that they were civilians. However, they believe this agreement was flouted as "rockets were fired directly into homes".
No one yet knows the death toll in Borodyanka, but Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's president, warned it could be higher there than in Bucha, where war crimes are believed to have been committed.
He said what had been committed throughout the region north of Kyiv had not been seen since the Nazi occupation.
People walk by an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine. Photo / AP
"There is already information that the number of victims may be even higher in Borodyanka and some other liberated cities," he said in his nightly address to the nation on Monday.
Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine's prosecutor general, echoed the President as she warned that Borodyanka, 23km west of Bucha, would be the worst hit by the invasion in the Kyiv region. She warned of a "similar humanitarian situation" to Bucha, cautioning that "the worst situation in terms of victims" was in Borodyanka.
When The Telegraph visited Borodyanka on Tuesday, it witnessed such destruction that officials' warnings over high death tolls came as little surprise.
Civilians were starved, with no way to get food because the Russians blockaded the area. Bridges were also blown up, making the ability to drive into the town even harder. Now, getting to Borodyanka means going through routes that are occupied by burnt-out tanks and cars. There is no easy way to get there and there are also reports of mines and IEDs, making the journey hazardous.
Rockets and bombs have ripped through this small town and decimated apartment blocks, transforming a once-prosperous area into a wasteland. Those who failed to escape the indiscriminate shelling remain under the mounds of rubble that were once their homes.
There are reminders, too, of the people who had once lived here peacefully.
People look for personal belongings in the rubble of an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine. Photo / AP
A woman's face powder, a red dressing gown, the squares of a baby's playmat, now mangled from the blasts. Towels, shoes and toys. The mementos of ordinary people's lives rest on top of the wreckage that, for now, acts as people's graves.
"Between 20-30 of my neighbours were left under the rubble," Dmytro Ostashevskyi said. He claimed that on the morning of February 27, "columns" of military equipment drove into Borodyanka.
"Then the shelling began," he said.
By the beginning of March, he said, Russian soldiers "just wandered around all the houses and tanks fired straight shots at them".
Behind where Ostashevskyi's house once stood, the buildings that are still partially standing have suffered irreparable damage. Walls have been torn off entire blocks, revealing the interiors of what were once people's homes.
From the street a bathroom with its lavatory intact can be seen, as well as the salmon pink wallpaper still clinging to its surface. The rest of the exposed apartments are mainly collapsed beams and concrete, making whatever those rooms once were completely indistinguishable.
Yet behind the ashen apartment block where Ostashevskyi lived remains one splash of colour; a mural of flowers, toadstools and mountains in hues of blues and greens and yellows. It is a small thing of beauty the Russians did not succeed in destroying.
However, just a stone's throw further and blinds that hang behind blown-out windows smack the concrete of the wall, while folders once containing documents are scattered across the ground.
A resident looks for belongings in an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine. Photo / AP
It is an area that is completely uninhabitable and a scene that is replicated throughout the entirety of Borodyanka.
Opposite where the homes once stood is a statue of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's famous poet and playwright. The statue is mostly intact, save for the two bullets that were shot through its head.
Broken glass intermingled with smashed concrete, pipes, metal and all sorts of building material clutter the roads. Wires hang limply from telephone pylons and the majority of the cars parked on the streets no longer have windscreens or doors attached.
One woman told the Telegraph that the local priest had instructed the bereaved to bury their dead in their gardens as it was not safe to bring them to the church. It is unclear when they will be able to remove them and lay them to rest properly.
Dead dogs lie on the pavements. It comes after the charity UAnimals said all of its 485 dogs had perished during the Russian occupation. It said the animals at its shelter had remained locked in their cages from the beginning of the war in late February until the beginning of April, when Russian soldiers left. During that time, the dogs had no food or water.
Away from the residential areas, supermarkets have been ransacked and torched. The roofs of buildings are torn off and any cars on the streets burnt.
Some vehicles and fences had the letter "V" spray painted on, one of the Russian pro-war symbols, while another fence had skulls graffitied onto them - a harrowing image of the death that has shaken this town.
