Experts work during the exhumation of bodies in the recently retaken area of Izium, Ukraine on Friday. Ukrainian authorities discovered a mass burial site near the recaptured city of Izium. Photo / AP
Experts work during the exhumation of bodies in the recently retaken area of Izium, Ukraine on Friday. Ukrainian authorities discovered a mass burial site near the recaptured city of Izium. Photo / AP
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
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 Volodymyr Zelenskyy says.
The site near Izium, recently recaptured from Russian forces, appears to be one of the largest 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 had been found at the site but the number of victims wasn'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. Some of the markers bore people's names and had flowers hanging from them.
Before exhumation, investigators with metal detectors scanned the site for explosives, and 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 or shot or 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.
Bags with dead bodies are seen during the exhumation in the recently retaken area of Izium, Ukraine on Friday. Photo / AP
Zelenskyy, who visited the Izium area on Thursday NZ time, 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.
"If the situation develops this way, our response will be more serious," Putin told reporters today after attending a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Uzbekistan.
Putin said the "liberation" of Ukraine's entire eastern Donbas region remained Russia's main military goal and that "we aren't in a rush," 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 UN 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.
Most of the people buried at the site were believed to be civilians, but a marker on one mass grave said it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers.
Russian officials distanced themselves from responsibility for the site. The Khariv region's Russian-installed governor, Vitaly Ganchev, told Russia's state-run Tass news agency that Ukrainian, not Russian, forces were responsible for civilian casualties in Izium. Tass also quoted a member of Russia's parliament, Alexander Malkevich, claiming Ukrainian troops had abandoned their dead, so Russian forces buried them.
Emergency workers have a rest during the exhumation in the recently retaken area of Izium, Ukraine on Friday. Photo / AP
Izium resident Sergei Gorodko said among the hundreds buried in individual graves were dozens of adults and children killed in a Russian airstrike on an apartment building, some of whom he pulled out of rubble "with my own hands".
Izium was a key supply hub for Russian forces until they withdrew in recent days. Izium city councillor Maksym Strelnikov told reporters hundreds of people had died during the fighting and after Russia seized the town in March. Many couldn't be properly buried, he said.
His claims could not be immediately verified, but similar scenes have played out in other cities Russian forces captured, including Mariupol.
Strelnikov said an untold number of people also died from lack of proper health care. Most of the city's prewar population of 47,000 fled to Ukrainian-held territories. Strelnikov said 10,000 residents remain in the ruined city, where they are bracing for more hardship with winter coming and most infrastructure destroyed.
Ukraine's national police chief, Ihor Klymenko, said "torture chambers" had been found in the Kharkiv region's recaptured towns and villages. The claim could not be independently verified.
Seven Sri Lankan students who fell into Russian hands in Kupiansk, also in the Kharkiv region, have also said they were held and mistreated, he said.
"They are scared, they were abused," Klymenko said. They include "a woman who can barely speak" and two with torn toenails.
Ukrainian Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Enin said bodies exhumed in the region showed "traces of a violent death, but also of torture — cut off ears, etc".
"This is just the beginning.
"All these traces of war crimes are now carefully documented by us. And we know from the experience of Bucha that the worst crimes can only be exposed over time," Enin said in an interview with Ukraine's Radio NV.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, the war continued to claim lives and wreak destruction.
• Ukraine's presidential office said Russian shelling killed five civilians and wounded 18 in a 24-hour span. Missile strikes were also reported, with Zelenskyy's hometown of Kryvyi Rih among the targets for a third consecutive day. Air raid sirens howled in the capital, Kyiv.
• More killings targeting pro-Russian separatist officials were reported in areas under their control. Separatist authorities said a blast killed the prosecutor-general and his deputy of the self-proclaimed republic in the Luhansk region. Moscow-backed authorities said two Russian-installed officials were also killed in Berdyansk, a city in the Zaporizhzhia region occupied earlier in the war. And local authorities reported three people were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on an administrative building in Russian-occupied Kherson.
• To bolster the Ukrainian offensive, the Biden administration announced another US$600 million (NZ$1 billion) package of military aid. - AP
