Andreiy Ziuzko stood near the flattened apartment complex in Borodyanka that was once his home, his belongings in plastic bags on the sidewalk beside a few blackened cooking pots on Tuesday.

The building had lain in ruins for weeks, struck just after fighting had driven him and his family to flee. It was only after a while that he explained something even worse had happened. His mother lived a few doors down, and her apartment had also been bombed.

“Mom’s home was hit on the same day,” Ziuzko said. “I can’t find her.”

Russian troops recently withdrew from the area around Borodyanka, a Ukrainian commuter town near Kyiv, the capital, that was among the first places to be hit by Russian airstrikes after the invasion. Now, dozens of people who were sheltering in basements or apartments are missing and presumed dead under the rubble, the acting mayor said Tuesday.

“We think over 200 people died,” said Georgii Yerko, the acting mayor of Borodyanka. “But it is an assumption.”

On Tuesday, New York Times journalists reached the town for the first time after Russian troops withdrew. The scars left behind were shocking, with great gashes sliced through multistorey complexes along the main street. Four apartment buildings had collapsed in the bombing, residents said, their floors crushed down to ground level like concertinas. Heavy fighting left more destruction for two miles along the main street.

Russia’s pullout from areas around Kyiv in recent days has unveiled evidence of abuses that have galvanised the world’s attention. In places like Bucha, a closer-in suburb of the capital just a few miles from Borodyanka, the focus has been on evidence that Ukrainian civilians were killed by Russian forces, including bodies whose hands had been bound and who had been shot at close range.

In Borodyanka, and other places, the focus has been on evidence that civilian buildings were indiscriminately targeted.

Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN chief for political and peace-building affairs, told the Security Council that explosive weapons had caused death and destruction in many populated areas.