Karina Yershova, 23, was allegedly raped, shot in the back of the head and dumped by Russian soldiers in a backyard in the town of Bucha, where more than 400 bodies have been found.

Kherson, the first major city to fall to Russia, could be retaken ‘within days’, Ukrainian officers have suggested as the Kremlin continued pulling its troops eastwards for a fresh offensive in the Donbas.

Elena – not her real name – was attacked on April 3 after a Russian sympathiser in the southern Kherson region told the troops her husband was a Ukrainian soldier on the front line.

Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, has heard messages from Putin’s forces discussing the brutal murder of civilians in the city of horrors outside Kyiv.