By René Garzke
Cruel Discovery in the Territories Liberated from Russian Rule! A mass grave was found in the recaptured city of Izyum in Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (44) announced on Thursday evening.
“We want the world to know what the Russian occupation caused,” Zelenskyy said on Thursday, without giving details on the number of bodies or the cause of death.
The investigations had begun, and the first findings should be available on Friday, said Selenskyj in his daily video message.
Missing Persons under Special Circumstances Officer Oleg Kotenko looks at the unidentified graves of civilians and Ukrainian soldiers killed by Russian forces earlier in the war Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/dpa
Previously, senior Ukrainian police officer Serhiy Bolvinov had told the broadcaster “Sky News‘ reports of mass graves in the reconquered areas.
︎ In the area of the city of Izyum, “one of the largest with more than 440 bodies” was discovered, according to Bolvinov. Many of them were buried individually.
Reporters from the Associated Press news agency who were on site spoke of hundreds of individual graves that were only marked by crosses. But there were also graves in which, according to the inscription, 17 Ukrainian soldiers were buried together.
A Ukrainian National Guardsman walks past a destroyed Russian infantry fighting vehicle at a checkpoint near the recently retaken territory of Izyum in Ukraine Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP/dpa
Some of the people were killed by gunfire, others died during bombing, policeman Bolvinov said. Their bodies are now to be forensically examined.
Russian forces withdrew from Izyum and other parts of the Kharkiv region last week amid an overwhelming Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Zelenskyy compared Izyum to the cities of Bucha and Mariupol, which have become symbols of the Russian army’s atrocities in Ukraine. “Russia leaves death everywhere,” said the President. The world must “really hold Moscow accountable for this war.”
Volunteers collect the bodies of the killed civilians in Bucha Photo: Rodrigo Abd/dpa
In the Kiev suburb of Bucha, the most serious war crimes were documented after the Russian troops withdrew in the spring. Hundreds of civilians were killed, including thousands in the port city of Mariupol.