Bodies found in a mass burial site outside of the recently liberated Ukrainian city of Izyum show signs of torture, Ukrainian authorities said — a grim echo of the grisly discoveries made after the liberation of Kyiv’s northern suburbs in April.
The site, on the outskirts of the city, contained 445 graves, according to Ukrainian police. Some bodies discovered there had their hands tied behind their backs and rope around their necks, Oleksandr Filchakov, head prosecutor for the Kharkiv region, said.“Bucha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izium,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Thursday. “Russia leaves death everywhere. And it must be held accountable for it.”
“We want the world to know what is really happening and what the Russian occupation has led to,” he added.
More than 400 bodies were discovered at a burial site in Izium after the city was liberated from Russian forces. JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded Russia to “be held responsible” for the hundreds of civilian deaths in Izium, eastern Ukraine. JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images
Russian forces previously occupied Izium, Ukraine for months. JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty ImagesReporters from the Associated Press witnessed at least 400 wooden crosses marking graves in the forest outside Izyum.
While authorities said they believe most of those buried there were civilians, one grave was marked as the burial place of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
“We haven’t counted them yet, but I think there are more than 25 or even 30,” Oleg Kotenko, a Ukrainian official, said of the soldiers in the grave.
Ukrainian servicemen search for land mines at a burial site in Izium, Ukraine. JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty ImagesInvestigators and witnesses said some among the dead were shot, others killed in artillery barrages, by airstrikes and land mines.
Sergei Gorodko, an Izyum resident, said that among the dead were dozens of adults and children killed in a Russian airstrike on an apartment building. Gorodko said he’d pulled some of them from the rubble with his own hands.
Despite the gruesome echoes of the war’s earlier atrocities, the Izyum site differs from those uncovered in the spring in Bucha and other northern towns.
Two forensic technicians dig up a body in a forest on the outskirts of Izium, eastern Ukraine on Sept. 16, 2022. JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian forces have made significant progress in recapturing Russian territory in Eastern Ukraine. JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty ImagesIn the Kyiv suburbs, bodies of civilians appeared to have been thrown together into unmarked graves. At the recently discovered Izyum site, graves were marked and numbered.
Russia did not immediately comment on the reports. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied allegations its forces are targeting civilians.
With an estimated 445 bodies, the Izyum mass grave would be the largest found in Europe since the brutal Balkan wars of the 1990s.
With Post wires
