Body Of Ukrainian Woman Believed To Be Raped, Shot Found In Bucha Mass Grave

The mutilated body of a 23-year-old Ukrainian woman was found among hundreds of corpses in a mass grave in Bucha. Grieving family members believe the woman may have been raped, tortured and shot in the head.

Karina Yershova's corpse was dumped in a garden together with the bodies of other victims killed by Russian troops that retreated from the Kyiv suburb earlier this month, according to Yahoo News Australia. She disappeared last month before her body was found with injuries. Authorities withheld details about her murder from her family, who were told that she suffered a violent death.

"She was shot at point-blank range. Almost half of her head was missing," Andrii Dereko, Yershova's stepfather, told The Telegraph in an interview, according to the New York Post.

Olesya Vasylets, who claimed to be a friend of Yershova's mother, noted in a Facebook post Tuesday that the 23-year-old woman was allegedly raped.

She wrote the post in Ukrainian, but according to the New York Post, part of it read, "Friends, terrible news. Racists killed my friend's daughter Karina Yershova. The pain is terrible."

Olena Dereko, Yershova's distraught mother, reportedly tried to open her daughter's coffin at her funeral and lay eyes on her for one last time. But Andrii took her away from the maimed body.

"We have not seen the lower part of her body, just the upper part, but what we have seen at the top, we can only imagine what can be on the rest of her body," the stepfather said, as per the outlet.

Andrii added that how Yershova's fingers and fingernails looked hinted that "she had been trying to fight."

When Yershova was found, she reportedly had a tourniquet around her leg that suggested she may have suffered a gunshot wound and tried to stop the bleeding.

The family members also believe Yershova was raped.

"I haven't heard of someone who was violently killed without being raped," the outlet quoted Andrii as saying.

"The people who were killed without being raped seem to have been the ones who were bombed. Those people who were shot and tortured, the soldiers raped them almost every time," the stepfather said further.

Yershova's parents said they were evacuated from Irpin and relocated to Odessa after Russian forces invaded the country. They asked her to leave Bucha as well, but she did not think it would be "so dangerous."

Amid the violence in Bucha, at least 25 females between the ages of 14 and 24 were held by Russian soldiers in a basement and "systematically raped." Nine of the victims are now pregnant, according to Lyudmyla Denisova, Ukraine's ombudsman for human rights.

Meanwhile, Yershova's mother said she didn't know if her anger over the violent death of her daughter would ever fade, Calgary Herald reported.

"How can I feel when someone took my only child? I have cried everything I had," the New York Post quoted her as saying. "I have no tears now."