IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian authorities have found a mass grave near a town in the country’s northeast that was occupied by Russian forces and was recently occupied by Ukrainian forces, President Volodymyr Zelensky said. said on Thursday.
“A mass grave of people has been found in Izium, Kharkiv region. Necessary procedures have been started there. Tomorrow there should be more information, clear and verifiable information,” Zelensky said in his late night televised address.
Associated Press reporters visit the site in a forest outside Iseum on Thursday. A mass grave was marked with the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. It was surrounded by hundreds of individual graves with crosses to mark them.
Zelensky listed other Ukrainian cities where officials say Russian soldiers left behind mass graves of civilians and evidence of alleged war crimes.
“Bucha, Mariupol, and now, unfortunately, Izium … Russia leaves death everywhere. And he must be held accountable for this. Russia will have to bear the real consequences for this war on the world,” he said.
Russian forces left Izium and other parts of the Kharkiv region last week amid a massive retaliatory strike by Ukraine. On Wednesday, Zelensky made a rare trip outside the Ukrainian capital to participate in the unfurling of the national flag at Izyum city hall.
A senior Ukrainian police investigator in the Kharkiv region, Sergei Bolvinov, told Britain’s Sky News television that a mass grave containing more than 440 bodies was discovered near Izium after Kyiv forces entered the city.
“We know that some (of the people buried in the pit) were shot, some died from artillery fire, so-called mine blast trauma. Some died from bombing. In addition, our There is information that many bodies are yet to be identified,” Bolvinov said.
Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Yevgen Annin claimed Thursday night that evidence was found in towns and villages recaptured during Kyiv’s advance into the Kharkiv region that Russian occupation troops set up a number of “torture chambers” that housed Ukrainian civilians and civilians. Both foreigners were detained in “utter inhumanity”. conditions”.
“We have already been faced with the excavation of individual corpses, not only with traces of a violent death, but also of torture: ears cut off, etc. This is just the beginning,” he said in an interview with Ukrainian radio station Radio NV. announced in the interview.
He claimed that among those detained at one location were students from an unspecified Asian country who were caught at a Russian checkpoint while trying to leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Enin did not specify where the students were being held, although he did mention the small towns of Balaklia and Volchansk as two places where the alleged torture chambers were found. His account could not be independently verified.