IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — Investigators searching through a mass burial site in Ukraine have found evidence that some of the dead were tortured, including bodies with broken limbs and ropes around their necks, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said Friday.
The site near Izium, which was recently recaptured from Russian forces, appears to be one of the largest of its kind discovered in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy spoke in a video he rushed out just hours after the exhumations began, apparently to underscore the gravity of the discovery. He said more than 400 graves have been found at the site but that the number of victims isn’t yet known.
Digging in the rain, workers hauled body after body out of the sandy soil in a misty pine forest near Izium. Protected by head-to-toe suits and rubber gloves, they gently felt through the decomposing remains of the victims’ clothing, seemingly looking for identifying items.
Associated Press journalists who visited the site saw graves marked with simple wooden crosses.Flowers hung from the markers on some of the graves, and some bore people’s names.
Before exhumation, investigators with metal detectors scanned the site for explosives. Soldiers strung red and white plastic tape between the trees.
Zelenskyy said hundreds of civilian adults and children, as well as soldiers, had been found “tortured, shot, killed by shelling” near Izium’s Pishchanske cemetery.
He cited evidence of atrocities, such as a body with a rope around its neck and broken arms. In another sign of possible torture, one man was found with his hands tied, according to Serhiy Bohdan, the head of Kharikiv police investigations, and Ukraine’s commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets.
Zelenskyy, who visited the Izium area on Wednesday, said the discoveries showed again the need for world leaders to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to press on with the war despite Ukraine’s gains and warned that Moscow could ramp up its strikes on the country’s vital infrastructure if Ukrainian forces target facilities in Russia.
Speaking to reporters Friday after attending a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan, Putin said the “liberation” of Ukraine’s entire eastern Donbas region remained Russia’s main military goal.
“We aren’t in a rush,” the Russian leader said, adding that Russia has only deployed volunteer soldiers to fight in Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces gained access to the site near Izium after recapturing the northeastern city and much of the wider Kharkiv region in a lighting advance that suddenly shifted the momentum in the nearly seven-month war. Ukrainian officials also found evidence of torture elsewhere in the region.
The U.N. human rights office said it would investigate, and the human rights group Amnesty International, said the discovery of the mass burial site confirmed “our darkest fears.”
“For every unlawful killing or other war crime, there must be justice and reparation for victims and their families and a fair trial and accountability for suspected perpetrators,” said Marie Struthers, the group’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
