KYIV/KUPIANSK, Ukraine, September 16 – Ukrainian officials said they found a mass burial site with 440 bodies, mainly civilians, recaptured from Russian forces in a northeastern city, it was called evidence of war crimes by the invaders in an area they had occupied for months.
“Russia is leaving behind death everywhere and must be held accountable,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address overnight.
Site in the former Russian front-line Izium’s Citadel It will be the largest mass burial in Europe since the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Ukrainian forces recaptured Izium after thousands of Russian soldiers fled the area, leaving behind arms and ammunition.
Ukraine’s police chief Ihor Klymenko told a news conference that all the bodies recovered so far appeared from the scene. being citizens, Although there was information that some soldiers may have been buried there as well.
“For months there was a mass terror, violence, torture and mass killings in the occupied territories,” Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolik tweeted in English, pictures of a forest strewn with wooden crosses in fresh muddy grounds. A giant pit was taped down with red and white crime-scene tape.
“Someone else wants to ‘stop the war’ instead of sending tanks? We have no right to leave people alone with evil.”
Russia did not immediately comment on reports of a mass burial site. In the past it has denied soldiers commit atrocities in conflict. Moscow called its action in Ukraine a “special military operation” to disarm its neighbour.
in Kupiansk, a Northeast Railway junction town whose part Captured by Kyiv’s army On Saturday, small units of Ukrainian troops were securing a nearly deserted ghost town as Russia cut supply lines and a rapid collapse at the front.
blood on the floor
A former Russian-occupied police station in Kupiansk, about 37 miles north of Izium, was hastily abandoned.
The Russian flag and a portrait of President Vladimir Putin lie on the station floor among broken glass. The records were set on fire. Behind the steel doors of the prison cells of the police station, there was blood on the floor and stains on the mattresses.
Three pigs of an abandoned style were grazing in the street of the city. Serhi, a middle-aged man in a thin jacket, was hungry for news.
“No electricity, no phone. If there was electricity, at least I could watch TV. If there were phones we could call our relatives.” “If only they hadn’t had all this bombing with everyone in their basement.”
After a week’s uptrend in the northeast, Ukrainian officials are trying to downplay hopes they can continue to move at that pace. They say that Russian soldiers who fled from the Kharkiv region are now digging and planning protect the territory in the neighbor Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told BBC radio: “It is extremely encouraging to see that Ukraine’s armed forces are able to retake the area and strike even behind Russian lines.”
“At the same time, we need to understand that this is not the beginning of the end of the war. We need to be prepared for the long haul.”
Putin has yet to comment publicly on this Shock on the battlefield by his army this month. Ukrainian officials say 3,400 square miles, about the size of the island of Cyprus, have been retaken.
Ukraine has also launched a major offensive to capture territory In the south, where it aims to trap thousands of Russian troops cut off from supplies on the west bank of the Dnipro River, and retake Kherson, Russia has captured the only major city since the start of the war.
Russia’s state-run RIA news agency has released a video showing smoke rising from the Russian-held administrative building in Kherson after rocket attacks from Ukraine.
Kirill Stremusov, the Russian-established deputy head of the region, told Russian state TV that a wing of the building was in practically destroyed, And there were dead and wounded, although it is too early to say how many. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment.
In the past, the chief prosecutor of the pro-Russian separatist administration in Luhansk was killed in an explosion in his office, according to Russian news agencies. Russia also reported cross-border attacks in its Belgorod region.
Because of the war and sanctions on Russia a rise in energy prices Especially in Europe, which is dependent on Russian oil and gas. Germany announced on Friday that a regulator is seizing the German unit of Russian oil giant Rosneft, including a giant refinery that supplies most of the fuel to the capital Berlin.
The Schwedt refinery relies on oil pumped from Russia via the “Friendship” pipeline to formerly communist Eastern Europe. German officials have said they hope the country will no longer receive Russian oil.
Ukraine’s pace of progress has boosted its morale and bolstered its case for more weapons from Western allies.
In Washington, US President Joe Biden announced a new $600 million weapons package For Ukraine, that includes High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and artillery rounds. The United States has sent about $15.1 billion in security aid to Kyiv since Russia’s February 24 invasion.