Bodies of civilians are being dug up near the town of Izyum after the recapture.
Image: AFP
The consequences of the Russian occupation are visible in the places in the Kharkiv region that were liberated by the Ukrainian troops: cemeteries and torture chambers. Russia speaks of a staging.
EAfter the liberation of Izyum, the Ukrainian authorities found around 440 graves in a forest near the city. Photographs of the burial ground show wooden crosses sticking between the tree trunks in the sandy soil, some with names, most just numbers. “The morticians didn’t know what kind of people they were, but they picked them up and buried them in this cemetery,” said Igor Kotenko, the Ukrainian government’s commissioner for missing persons.
Most were believed to have been killed by artillery fire, he told Russian-language TV channel Currenttime.tv. “We conclude that from the data on the crosses – people died when they shelled the city.” An investigator with the Kharkiv police told the British broadcaster Sky News that all the bodies are now being exhumed and forensically examined. In his evening video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “Bucha, Mariupol and now, unfortunately, Izyum. Russia leaves death everywhere. It has to take responsibility for that.”