Ukrainian authorities have excavated more than 530 bodies of civilians in areas recaptured from Russian forces in the northeastern part of the country since the armed forces’ counter-offensive began, Kharkiv police said on Thursday.
“We counted and removed the bodies of 534 civilians from the liberated areas, including 226 women, 260 men, 19 children and 29 other people whose gender has not yet been determined,” said Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the police investigation department of the United Nations. Kharkiv, in a statement. a statement Press conference.
Bolvinov said these figures include bodies exhumed in a forest near Izium, where about 440 unmarked graves were found after the Russians left on Sept. 16.
Ukrainian authorities also say they have found dozens of alleged torture chambers and detention centers where detainees were held in inhumane conditions.
Ukraine’s National Police said on Wednesday it was investigating 928 alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops during their occupation of the Kharkiv region.
Russian forces have been accused of numerous abuses in areas under their control in Ukraine, most notably in Bucha, outside Kiev, where corpses of civilians were discovered after their withdrawal from the area in late March.
Moscow denied committing these crimes and considered the discovery of bodies in Izium a lie.
After receiving Western weapons, Ukrainian forces launched a counter-offensive in late August, which allowed them to recapture some of the areas under Moscow’s control.
The Ukrainian army has already recaptured most of the Kharkov region in the northeast and is now on the offensive in the east of the country, where it recently recaptured the Lyman railway junction, and in the south, where it wants the city of Kherson. to conquer .
“The Ukrainian armed forces have liberated more than 400 square kilometers of the Kherson region since the beginning of October,” spokeswoman for the military command in the south, Natalia Gumeniuk, said Thursday, quoted by the French news agency AFP.
Kherson is one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed in late September as part of its invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24 of this year.
In addition to Kherson, the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk and Zaporijia were annexed by Russia, which is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
The Moscow army said in its daily report on Thursday that “the enemy has been removed from the defense line of Russian troops” in the Kherson region.
According to Moscow, Ukrainian troops deployed four tactical battalions to this front and made “several attempts to break through the Russian defenses” at Dudchany, Sukhanove, Sadok and Bruskinskoye.
Information about the course of the war disclosed by both sides cannot be independently verified immediately.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been condemned by the Western community at large and Western allies have supplied the Ukrainian armed forces with weapons.
Source: DN
