The road to the recently liberated Ukrainian village of Storozhe is littered with corpses of Russian soldiers and burned armored vehicles. Terrible scenes testify to the brutality of the fighting Ukrainian troops recaptured Storozhovoand several other villages in recent days as part of a counteroffensive in southern and eastern Ukraine, Reuters reports.

When Reuters reporters arrived in the village on Wednesday, some of the dead Russian soldiers lay on the dusty ground next to the remains of their vehicles. Others were crushed on the nearby grass and fields, where they died.

Inside the village, the small one-story houses that stood along the road were badly damaged by the bombing, their roofs either completely gone or with huge holes.

An abandoned cart lay on the side of the road. The village was silent, the locals had left it or were hiding somewhere.

“Three days ago we liberated the village of Storozhevo. You can see for yourself how it was done. You see the equipment destroyed. Glory to Ukraine,” a Ukrainian soldier who gave his name as Artyom told Reuters in Storozhevo.

A photo posted online on Monday shows Ukrainian soldiers raising a Ukrainian flag in front of a damaged house in Storozhevo.

The village has been occupied by Russian troops since March 2022, a month after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

According to the military, about 50 Russian soldiers were killed during the “clearance” and four were captured. Reuters was unable to verify the number of Russian dead, although bodies were still scattered along the road and in nearby fields.

Storozheve is part of a group of settlements near the Mokri Yala River that, according to Ukraine, have been liberated by its troops since the start of the counteroffensive.

Reuters also reached the village of Neskuchne on Tuesday, providing the first independent confirmation of Ukraine’s advance since Kyiv’s counteroffensive began.

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