Ukrainian officials have discovered two more mass burial sites in the northeastern town of Izyum, which they liberated from Russian occupation earlier this month.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Sunday that they had discovered them just weeks after having uncovered another mass burial area with more than 430 bodies, some of which displayed signs of being tortured.
Russian forces have been accused of heinous crimes against civilians in areas they occupied, and the allegations range from torturing and murdering civilians to committing sexual and gender-based violence. There have been multiple cities where Russian forces retreated, and in many instances, they left behind horrific scenes and murdered civilians.
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“They do not kill military personnel,” Zelensky said in an interview with CBS that aired on Sunday. “They rape, torture, and kill civilians. Imagine, I was there a few days ago. We found a big mass grave of half of a thousand people. Today, I received more information. The journalists are on their way. They found two more mass graves, big graves with hundreds of people. Also … we’re talking about a little town of Izyum. Do you know? There are two more mass graves in a small town. This is what’s going on.”
U.S. Ambassador Michael Carpenter to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a briefing on Monday, “We are seeing many commonalities in terms of the horrors being discovered in the wake of the Russian retreat from the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions and the previous Russian withdrawal from the municipalities north of Kyiv, as well as the Sumy region and the Chernihiv region.”
“We are seeing now in Izyum, the number keeps rising on the number of bodies exhumed from this mass grave. It’s now close to 450 if I’m not mistaken, and again, we see men, women, and children among the victims, and we see, at least among some, signs of torture and abuse, digits that have been cut off. Other forms of mutilation,” Carpenter added. “Again, point blank shots to the head.”
Last week, United Nations investigators concluded the Russian military had committed war crimes during its seven-month war in Ukraine. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine investigated the Russian military’s actions mainly in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy regions, and it visited 27 towns and settlements, interviewing more than 150 victims and witnesses.
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The investigators documented a “large number of executions” in 16 towns where there was a pattern of “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats” and that “we were struck by the large number of executions and other violations by Russian forces, and the Commission received consistent accounts of torture and ill-treatment.”
“The Commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined. Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons,” Chairman Erik Mose said to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday. “The exposure to repeated explosions, crimes, forced displacement and separation from family members deeply affected their well-being and mental health.”
