Father Mykola, a priest of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, gazed out from the steps of St Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in the commuter town of Bucha, near Kyiv.

Ukrainian forces had just recaptured the town after a five-week Russian occupation that had destroyed buildings and taken lives almost indiscriminately. Now a task force of government soldiers and prosecutors could be seen moving between the hunks of charred tanks and armoured vehicles as they recovered the dead bodies of civilians lying in the road. Shadowing this grim clear-up operation – which was at the same time a forensic exercise in gathering evidence of war crimes – I counted nine corpses, some with hands tied behind their backs, piled high in a single back yard.