Bodies with rope around their necks and hands were among those visible at a mass burial site being exhumed by Ukrainian police and forensic experts in territory recaptured from Russians in northeastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials said they had found 440 bodies in woodlands near the city of Izium. They said most of the dead were civilians, and that the site proved war crimes had been committed by Russian invaders who occupied the area for months.
Men in white overalls were digging out bodies at the site in a forest where around 200 makeshift wooden crosses were scattered among trees. Some 20 white body bags could be seen.
Kharkiv regional prosecutor Olexander Ilyenkov told the BBC there was no doubt war crimes had been committed there.
“In the first grave, there is a civilian who has a rope over her neck. So we see the traces of torture,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address overnight: “Russia is leaving death behind it everywhere and must be held responsible.”
The site in Izium, a former Russian front-line stronghold, would be the biggest mass burial found in Europe since the aftermath of the 1990s Balkan wars. Ukrainian forces retook Izium after thousands of Russian troops fled the area, abandoning weapons and ammunition.
Ukrainian police chief Ihor Klymenko told a news conference all of the bodies recovered so far at the site appeared to be of civilians, although there was information that some soldiers might have been buried there too.
‘Terror, violence, torture, mass murder’
“For months a rampant terror, violence, torture and mass murders were in the occupied territories,” Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted in English.
The head of the pro-Russian administration which abandoned the area last week, Vitaly Ganchev, was quoted by Russia’s TASS state news agency as accusing Ukrainian forces of being responsible for killings and trying to blame Moscow.
“It was obvious to us that Ukraine would try to repeat the Bucha scenario. Now we have that in Izium,” he said, comparing the situation to a city north of the capital Kyiv where hundreds of bodies were found after Russian forces fled in March.
Moscow has said those killings were staged by Ukraine, an accusation rejected by Kyiv and international investigators.
450 graves… Only one of the mass graves discovered near Izyum. For months a rampant terror, violence, torture and mass murders were in the occupied territories. Anyone else wants to "freeze the war" instead of sending tanks? We have no right to leave people alone with the Evil. pic.twitter.com/YxGyOZfm1Y
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) September 16, 2022
In Kupiansk, a northeastern railway junction city whose partial capture by Kyiv’s forces on Saturday cut Russia’s supply lines and led to the swift collapse at the front, small units of Ukrainian troops were securing a nearly deserted ghost town.
A formerly Russian-occupied police station had been hastily abandoned. Russian flags and a portrait of President Vladimir Putin lay on the floor amid broken glass. Records had been torched. Behind the steel doors of the station’s jail cells there was blood on the floor and stains on the mattresses.
After a week of rapid gains in the northeast, Ukrainian officials have sought to dampen expectations they could continue to advance at that pace. They say Russian troops that fled the Kharkiv region are now digging in and planning to defend territory in neighbouring Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
Hundreds of bodies were discovered when Russian troops departed. Photo: Getty
‘Not the beginning of the end’
“It is of course extremely encouraging to see that Ukrainian armed forces have been able to take back territory and also strike behind Russian lines,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told BBC radio.
“At the same time, we need to understand that this is not the beginning of the end of the war. We need to be prepared for the long haul.”
Ukraine has also launched a major offensive to recapture territory in the south, where it aims to trap thousands of Russian troops cut off from supplies on the west bank of the Dnipro river, and retake Kherson, the only large Ukrainian city Russia has captured intact since the start of the war.
Russia’s state-run RIA news agency released video showing smoke billowing from Kherson’s Russian-occupied administration building after apparent Ukrainian rocket attacks.
-AAP
