those who did not flee were slaughtered by the Romanians." Similar numbers are advanced by Mikhail Meltyukhov, who concludes that "according to official Romanian data, more than 5,000 were killed", and that "15,000 people suffered in one form or another". Scholars I. P. Fostoy and V. M. Podlubny also report 160 railway workers being killed, one of them through immolation. They note that the 11,000 total can be traced to an estimate first publicized by the International Red Aid in 1925. Romanian losses, meanwhile, amounted to 369; this includes 159 killed in action, 93 wounded, and a further 117 missing. Some murders of civilians are described in Romanian sources. According to Lieutenant Gheorghe Eminescu, his colleague, Captain Mociulschi, shot a railway signalman held responsible for assisting the partisans with their raid on Ocnița. The measures were observed by McLaren and two other British officers touring the UNR; one of them is identified by Stănescu as Lieutenant Edwin Boxhall of Naval Intelligence. According to Giurcă, they favored the UNR and "Ukrainian Bolshevik troops", with reports which exaggerated the scale of repression and victimized non-Romanians, in particular Jews caught between the two sides. Petala, who was ordered to investigate Davidoglu, suggested that the McLaren group were of "doubtful good faith". Likewise, Stănescu reads the British report as a "complete denaturation", with "Bolsheviks" being depicted as "victims of Romanian repressions." Interrogated by the Romanian side, McLaren noted that Khotyn had been shelled by the Romanians until a civilian delegation had declared it an open city. The occupiers, he recalled, had engaged in widespread looting and "barbaric" beatings. He recalled witnessing one botched execution, in which a suspected robber was left to agonize for hours, as well as the shooting of 53 peasants in Nedăbăuți. According to his reports, several boys and old men were shot during robberies condoned by Davidoglu, while a man of unspecified age, Nikita Zankovsky, was bayonetted in front of his family. Similar accounts mention other acts of cruelty, including at Rucșin, where Major Popescu shot 12 captives after forcing them to dig their own grave, also killing any disabled men he found in civilian homes. By contrast, Coroiu reports that the one robber to be executed in Khotyn was a Romanian sergeant, caught looting despite an explicit ban. McLaren's account also conflicted with a testimony by Khotyn's deposed mayor, who had been imprisoned alongside the British officers. Gachikevich argued