An Amnesty International report released on Thursday contains testimonies from people in Ukraine who say they saw Russian forces executing civilians near the capital, Kyiv, in what the global nonprofit human rights organization said. labeled as “apparent war crimes” that must be investigated.

Testimonies, collected by Amnesty investigators on the ground in villages and towns near Kyiv, including Bucha, Vorzel, Hostomel and Bohdanivka, reveal “that unarmed civilians in Ukraine are being killed in their homes and on their streets in acts of indescribable cruelty and shocking brutality,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, in the report.

“These deaths must be fully investigated and those responsible must be prosecuted, including up the chain of command,” Callamard said.

In particularly shocking testimony, one woman told Amnesty that two Russian soldiers killed her husband and ‘repeatedly raped her at gunpoint while her young son hid in a nearby boiler room’. The woman and her son were then able to escape from their village east of Kyiv, Amnesty said.

Other witnesses told Amnesty that they had seen or heard Russian armed forces shooting at unarmed civilians – in one case when the person was looking over a fence, in another because they had no cigarettes.

Many Western governments have called for an independent investigation into possible Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and the United Nations General Assembly will vote on Thursday on whether to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council. ‘UN. Russia has denied targeting civilians and claimed, without presenting evidence, that images of atrocities in Bucha were staged.