Izyum, Ukraine – Investigators are looking into what appears to be one of the largest mass burial sites ever discovered Ukraine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that evidence of atrocities, including torture, was found on land recently recovered from Russia.
In a video apparently rushed to stress the seriousness of the finds just hours after the exhumations began, Zelensky said hundreds of adult civilians and children, as well as soldiers, were found “tortured and shot dead by shelling” near the Pychansky cemetery in Izyum. . He cited evidence of atrocities, such as a body around his neck and the breaking of his arms with a rope.
In the video, Zelensky said that more than 400 graves have been found at the site but the number of casualties is not yet known. Zelensky, who visited the Izyum region on Wednesday, said the discoveries once again demonstrated the need for world leaders to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia would continue the war despite the success of the recent Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Speaking to reporters on Friday after attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Putin said that the “liberation” of the entire Donbass region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, remains Russia’s main goal.
He added, “We are not in a hurry” to achieve the stated goals, noting that Russia only participated in the operation with volunteer soldiers.
While digging in the rain, workers pulled corpses after corpses from the sandy soil of the pine forest near Izium. Protected in full-body suits and rubber gloves, they gently felt through the decaying remains of the victims’ clothing, seemingly searching for things that might identify them.
Ukrainian forces were able to gain access to the site after retaking the northeastern city and much of the wider Kharkiv region in a counterattack that suddenly changed the momentum in the nearly seven-month war. Ukrainian officials also found evidence of torture elsewhere in the region. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said it would investigate.
Associated Press journalists who visited the Izium site saw tombs in pine trees with a simple wooden cross on them. Most of them were numbered in the 400s.
The majority of the people buried are believed to be civilians, but a mass grave marker said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the war continued to claim lives and wreak havoc.
The Ukrainian presidential office said that the Russian bombing killed five civilians and wounded 18 others within 24 hours. Missile strikes were also reported, with Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih among the targets for the third day in a row on Friday. Sirens also sounded in the capital, Kyiv.
There were reports of more killings targeting pro-Russian separatist officials in areas under their control. The separatist authorities said that an explosion killed the prosecutor of the self-proclaimed republic in the Luhansk region. Moscow-backed authorities said two Russian-appointed officials were also killed in Berdyansk, a city in the Zaporizhia region occupied earlier in the war. Local authorities reported that at least one person was killed and 10 wounded in a Ukrainian missile attack on an administrative building in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson.
To bolster the Ukrainian offensive, the Biden administration announced another $600 million military aid package.
Among the hundreds buried in individual graves were dozens of adults and children who were killed in a Russian air strike on an apartment building, said Izyum resident Sergei Gorodko.
He said he pulled some out of the rubble “with my own hands.”
Before the bodies were exhumed, investigators with metal detectors scanned the site for any hidden explosives. Soldiers tied red and white plastic strips between the trees to mark parts of the site. There were a few graves with wreaths hanging from crosses, some of them bearing people’s names.
Izyum was a major supply center for Russian forces until they withdrew in recent days. Izyum city councilor Maxim Strelnikov told reporters that hundreds of people died in the fighting and after Russia captured the city in March. He said many were unable to bury properly.
His claims could not be immediately verified, but similar sightings occurred in other cities captured by Russian forces, including Mariupol.
Countless people have also died due to a lack of proper healthcare since the “city’s medical infrastructure was destroyed,” Strelnikov said. Most of the city’s pre-war population of 47,000 fled to Ukraine-controlled territory. Strelnikov said 10,000 residents remain in the devastated city – preparing for more hardships as winter sets in and most infrastructure is destroyed.
The head of the Ukrainian National Police, Ihor Klimenko, said that “torture chambers” were found in the restored towns and villages in the Kharkiv region. The claim cannot be independently verified.
Seven Sri Lankan students who fell into Russian hands in Kobyansk, also in the Kharkiv region, said they were detained and mistreated, he said.
“They are afraid, they have been abused,” he said. Among them are a “woman who can barely speak” and two with torn nails.
The bodies exhumed in the area also showed “traces of violent death, but also traces of torture – cutting off ears, etc. This is just the beginning,” Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Yevvin Enin said.
All traces of these war crimes are carefully documented by us. In Ukraine, “We know from Bucha’s experience that only the worst crimes can be revealed over time,” Enin said in an interview with Radio.
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This story has been updated to correct that seven, not six, Sri Lankan students said they fell into the hands of the Russians.
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Journalists Hana Arherova and John Gambrel in Kyiv and Jamie Kitten in Geneva contributed reporting for the Associated Press.
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Follow the Associated Press’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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