As Ukrainian forces work to liberate more territory in the country’s northeast, they discover more mass graves, corpses and sites intended for torture by invading Russian forces.
In Donetsk, the head of the investigation department of the regional police, Sergey Polnenov, said, “We found the bodies of 534 civilians from the occupied territories” in the Kharkiv region alone, according to the network.CNNPolvinov added that the bodies belonged to 226 women and 19 children.
Most of these bodies came from the city of Izezim – 447 bodies – which were liberated by Ukrainian forces early last month. Russian forces were using Izyum as a springboard for attacks south in the Donetsk region.
In Lyman, 160 km to the southeast, the local governor said 39 other “burial sites” had been uncovered, according to the newspaper.Washington PostIt was not clear how many bodies were buried there or how they died.
Polvinov also claimed that more than twenty Russian “torture chambers” had been found in the area.
“In almost all major cities and towns, where military units of the Russian army are stationed, they have set up such places to hold and torture civilians and prisoners of war,” he said.
He continued, “This is the twenty-second torture chamber that we found and examined in the Kharkiv region, which was liberated from the occupation.”
In Izyum, Russian soldiers used a kindergarten and a medical clinic as torture sites, according to the Washington Post.
He said that the most common methods of torture were electric shocks, severe beatings with sticks, and other things. There have also been cases of nail hammering and the use of gas masks to restrict breathing.
Polvinov said they are taking further criminal action over allegations of rape committed by Russian forces during their occupation of the area.
He added: “We understand that it is very difficult for victims to testify about such facts. However, there are procedures that we have recorded, and there are appeals from women who have been raped… We have information about the alleged facts of rapes in torture rooms.”
The Ukrainian investigations in Kharkiv follow the discovery of massive human rights violations by Russian forces north of Kyiv in March.
A report published by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in July found that patterns of violence committed by Russian forces in Ukraine fit the classification of crimes against humanity.
Russia was accused of a series of war crimes during its failed campaign to capture the capital, Kyiv, during the first weeks of the invasion.
After the withdrawal from Bucha, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, reports emerged that Russian forces were carrying out executions through indiscriminate bombing.
Also, tied bodies were found, some of which were left to rot, with signs of torture. Moscow has consistently denied the responsibility of its soldiers for war crimes.
In Bucha, the Kremlin claimed – without evidence – that atrocities there were orchestrated, but witnesses who spoke to CNN said the massacres in the town began after it was occupied by the Russians.