by Gleb Garanich
IZIOUM, Ukraine (Reuters) – Ukrainian forensic scientists began exhuming bodies on Friday at a site where hundreds of graves were discovered near the town of Izioum (northeast) recently reconquered by Ukraine, which there sees evidence of new war crimes committed by Russia.
Some unearthed corpses had their hands tied behind their backs, the governor of the Kharkiv region said. “Every fact will be investigated and properly and legally considered,” Olegh Sinehoubov said.
In total, about 440 graves were discovered in a forest near this locality occupied for months by Russia and most of the corpses are those of civilians, according to Kyiv authorities.
“Russia is leaving death behind everywhere and must be held accountable,” Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky said in his daily video message Thursday evening.
Men in white uniforms came out of the ground Friday from the bodies on this site where one could see some 200 wooden crosses scattered among the trees. About twenty body bags were also visible to the journalists invited to the scene.
The reconquest of Izium was officially confirmed over the weekend by Ukraine after the hasty departure of Russian forces, who left behind weapons and ammunition.
At a press conference, Ukrainian police chief Ihor Klimenko said all the bodies exhumed so far appeared to be those of civilians, although soldiers could have been buried as well.
“The occupied territories have experienced months of terror, violence, torture and mass murder,” said Zelensky’s adviser Mikhaïlo Podoliak in English on Twitter.
“Anyone else wants to ‘freeze the war’ instead of sending in tanks? We have no right to leave people alone with evil,” he added.
KUPIANSK, GHOST TOWN
Vitali Gantchev, the head of the pro-Russian administration installed at the head of the Kharkiv region, now taken over by Ukraine, accused the Ukrainian forces of being behind the killings and of seeking to carry them out. lay the blame on Moscow.
“It’s obvious to us that Ukraine is trying to repeat the Bucha scenario. Now we have that in Izium,” he told Russian news agency Tass, referring to the northern city of Izium. kyiv where hundreds of corpses were discovered after the departure of Russian troops last March.
Moscow claims that the Boutcha massacres were committed by Ukraine, an accusation denied by Kyiv and the international investigators dispatched to the scene.
To the north of Izium, Kupiansk has practically become a ghost town where a few Ukrainian army patrols circulate.
The capture of this railway junction on Saturday by Kyiv forces cut off the Russian army’s supply lines and precipitated the collapse of its defense lines in the region.
A police station formerly occupied by Russian troops was hastily abandoned. Russian flags and a portrait of Vladimir Putin lie on the ground among shards of glass.
Sergiy, a middle-aged man met there, eagerly asks for news. “There is no electricity, no telephone,” he explains.
BOMBING IN KHERSON
After the flash reconquest of the Kharkiv region, Ukraine tempers the prospect of a new flash advance of its forces towards the South-East and the Donbass region, which includes the oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk and where the Russian army gathered his troops.
The counter-offensive of the Ukrainian forces was very effective but it does not sign in any way the end of the war and we must expect a long conflict, also warned Friday the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.
Ukraine says it has reclaimed 9,000 square kilometers of territory in recent days, an area equivalent to that of Corsica. Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet made any public comment on the setbacks suffered by the Russian military in the northeast.
Ukraine has also launched a counter-offensive in the south with the hope of trapping thousands of Russian soldiers deprived of supplies on the west bank of the Dnieper and recapturing the major city of Kherson.
On Friday, the pro-Russian administration in Kherson accused Ukrainian forces of shelling public buildings, killing at least one person and injuring several.
In the Donbass, the prosecutor general of the People’s Republic of Luhansk and his deputy were killed on Friday by a bomb explosion in their office, announced the leader of this self-proclaimed republic supported by Russia.
In the south, near Mariupol, a couple who were organizing preparations for a referendum on the region’s annexation to Russia were also killed overnight, local pro-Russian authorities said.
Russia has also reported strikes on its territory in the Belgorod region, which faces Kharkiv.
(Reuters offices, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)