Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk claimed on Tuesday that Ukrainian authorities had found 403 bodies so far believed to have been slaughtered by Russian forces, Newsweek reported.
Fedoruk also said during a briefing that Bucha residents could not yet return to the town, which is still recovering from its temporary occupation by Russia last month.
The declaration from Fedoruk has been consistently refuted by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin, who have decried the contention of a massacre in Bucha as a hoax.
Putin compared the Bucha incident to a widespread conspiracy theory that the West perpetrated chemical weapon attacks against Syria during the early stages of the country's civil war and blamed it on leader Bashar al-Assad, according to Reuters.
"It's the same kind of fake in Bucha," Putin said of the allegations.
U.S. President Biden appeared to take the side of Ukraine in their claims of a massacre being perpetrated in Bucha while speaking to reporters earlier this month, reiterating his statement that Putin is a "war criminal," Al-Jazeera reported.
"You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal," Biden said. "Well, the truth of the matter, we saw it happen in Bucha … he is a war criminal."
The president also endorsed an investigation into Bucha and other allegations of Russian war crimes to substantiate a possible trial against Putin and his allies.
"We have to gather the information," he said. "We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue to fight, and we have to get all the details, so this could be … a war crimes trial."
Putin "is brutal and what's happening in Bucha is outrageous, and everyone's seen it," Biden added.
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