Oleg Kotenko, Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances, uses his smartphone to film a scene of a Ukrainian soldier’s grave in the newly recaptured area of Izium, Ukraine, on April 15. September 2022.
Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
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Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
Oleg Kotenko, Commissioner for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances, uses his smartphone to film a scene of a Ukrainian soldier’s grave in the newly recaptured area of Izium, Ukraine, on April 15. September 2022.
Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
IZIUM, Ukraine – Ukrainian authorities have found a mass burial site near a recaptured northeastern city formerly occupied by Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced.
The tomb was discovered near Izium in the Kharkiv region.
“The necessary formalities have already started there. More information – clear, verifiable information – will be available tomorrow,” Zelenskyy said in his daily televised address on Thursday night. .
Associated Press journalists saw the site Thursday in a wooded area outside Izium. Amidst the woods are hundreds of graves with simple wooden crosses, most of them just numbered. A larger grave has a marker that says it contains the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
Investigators with metal detectors are scouring the site for any hidden explosives.
Oleg Kotenko, an official with the Ukrainian ministry tasked with reintegration of the occupied territories, said videos posted by Russian soldiers on social media showed potentially more than 17 bodies in the grave.
“We haven’t counted them yet, but I think there are more than 25 or even 30,” he said.
Izium resident Sergei Gorodko said that of the hundreds of people buried in individual graves, dozens of adults and children were killed in a Russian air strike on an apartment building.
He said he pulled some of them out of the rubble “with my own hands.”
Zelenskyy cited other Ukrainian cities, where authorities said the retreating Russian troops left behind mass graves of civilians and evidence of possible war crimes.
“Bucha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izium. … Russia leaves death everywhere. And it must be responsible for it. The world must hold Russia truly responsible for this war. “, he said in the speech.
Sergei Bolvinov, a senior investigator with the Ukrainian police in the eastern Kharkiv region, told British broadcaster Sky News that a pit containing more than 440 bodies had been discovered near Izium after Kyiv’s forces overran the area. . He described the tomb as “one of the largest burial sites of any liberated city.”
Some people buried in the pit were shot. Others died from artillery, mines or air raids. Many bodies have yet to be identified, Bolvinov said.
Russian forces left Izium and other parts of the Kharkiv region last week amid a staggering Ukrainian counterattack. On Wednesday, Zelenskyy took a rare trip outside the capital to see the national flag being hoisted over Izium’s town hall.
Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Enin said Thursday evening that other evidence found following Kyiv’s extensive offensive into the Kharkiv region included numerous “torture chambers” where both Ukrainian citizens and foreigners were tortured. detained “in completely inhumane conditions.”
Enin said in an interview with Radio NV: “We have come across the exhumation of individual bodies, not only with traces of a violent death, but also torture – ear cutting, etc. It’s just the beginning.”
He claimed that among those held at one of the locations were students from an unspecified Asian country who were arrested at a Russian checkpoint as they tried to leave the territory. territory controlled by Ukraine.
Enin did not specify where the students were being held, although he named the small cities of Balakliya and Volchansk as the two locations where the torture chambers were found. His account cannot be independently verified.
“All these traces of war crimes are now carefully documented by us. And we know from experience in Bucha that the worst crimes can only be exposed over time,” Enin said. , referring to a suburb of Kyiv, where the bodies of hundreds of civilians were discovered after Russian troops withdrew from the area in March.
Earlier, on Thursday, Zelenskyy said that during the five months the Russians occupied the area, they “only destroyed, only deprived, only took away.”
“They left villages devastated; in some villages there wasn’t a single house that was undamaged. The occupiers turned schools into landfills and churches – ruined, literally turned into ruins. toilet.”
In another development on Thursday, Zelenskyy worked to add political impetus to Ukraine’s recent military achievements, while rocket attacks that caused flooding near his homeland demonstrated determination Moscow’s focus on regaining the battlefield advantage.
A week after the Ukrainian counterattack, Zelenskyy met the head of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen during her third wartime visit to Kyiv. Von der Leyen publicly expressed full support of the 27-nation bloc and wore an outfit bearing the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
“It is extremely important and necessary to provide Ukraine with the military equipment it needs to defend itself. And they have proven that they can do this if they are well equipped,” she said.
Air raid sirens sounded twice in Kyiv during von der Leyen’s meeting with Zelenskyy, a reminder that Russia has long-range weapons that can reach any location in Ukraine even though the capital did not. attacked in recent weeks.
Ukrainian officials said Russian missiles late Wednesday hit a water reservoir near Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy’s birthplace and largest city in central Ukraine. The strikes have flooded more than 100 homes.
Russian military bloggers said the attack was intended to flood areas downstream where Ukrainian forces entered during their counter-offensive.
The head of local government on Thursday announced a new attack on the dam and said emergency teams were working to prevent more water from escaping.
The first attack so close to his roots angered Zelenskyy, who said the attacks had no military value.
In fact, attacking hundreds of thousands of civilians is another reason why Russia lost the battle.
