Status: 09/16/2022 02:13 am
A mass grave was found in Izyum, Kharkiv region, according to the President of Ukraine. A senior police investigator speaks of hundreds of victims. The deputy interior minister reports evidence of torture chambers.
Ukrainian authorities have discovered a mass grave near the recently recaptured city of Izyum, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The “necessary procedures” there had begun, and further information should be available today, Zelenskyj said in his evening television speech.
Journalists from the AP news agency saw the site in a forest outside of Izyum in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast. It was marked with a reference to the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. Hundreds of individual graves around the site were marked with crosses.
Zelenskyy named other Ukrainian cities where, according to the authorities, the withdrawing Russian troops left behind mass graves and evidence of war crimes. “Bucha, Mariupol and now, unfortunately, also Izyum. … Russia leaves death everywhere,” he said. “And it must be held accountable for this. The world must hold Russia to real responsibility for this war.”
Police speak of 440 victims
Russian forces left Izyum and other parts of the Kharkiv region last week in the face of a counteroffensive by Ukrainian troops. Zelenskyj visited the city on Wednesday and thanked the Ukrainian soldiers for their service.
A senior investigator with the Ukrainian police in the Kharkiv region, Sergei Bolvinov, told British TV channel Sky News that a pit with more than 440 bodies was discovered near Izyum after the invasion of Ukrainian forces. He spoke of one of the largest tombs in the liberated cities.
“We know that some (of the people buried in the pit) were shot, some died from artillery fire or from what are known as mine blast injuries,” he said. “Some died in air raids.” According to the information, many bodies have not yet been identified.
Authorities speak of evidence of torture chambers
Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Jenin said in the evening that evidence of torture chambers had been found in cities and towns in Kharkiv after the Russian troops withdrew. Ukrainian citizens and foreigners were held there under inhumane conditions. Traces of torture were also found on corpses, Jenin told the Ukrainian radio station NV.
His description matches at least half a dozen reports compiled by representatives of Kharkiv regional police over the past weekend.