A macabre discovery in the liberated city of Izioum. While this key city in northeastern Ukraine was seized by kyiv forces nearly a week ago, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday they had found some “450 graves” there. President Volodymyr Zelensky blamed the mass grave on “the Russian occupation”.
• 445 civilians and 17 military
This Thursday night, President Zelensky evoked the discovery of a “mass grave” in the city of Izioum, recovered from Russian forces during the kyiv counteroffensive. He had invited Ukrainian and international journalists to go there to provide “clear and verified information” about this mass grave.
“We want the world to know what is really happening and what the Russian occupation has brought. Butcha, Mariupol, now, unfortunately, Izium… ”, she lamented.
This Friday in Izioum, journalists from BFMTV and AFP were able to observe forensic doctors and Ukrainian soldiers busy in the middle of a forest at the entrance to the city. Here, a grave where 17 Ukrainian soldiers were buried.
Around him, several hundred tombs surmounted by crosses, with numbers, for some of the names. The dates are also listed, ranging from the beginning of March, when the city was still under Ukrainian control, to the beginning of September.
In total, according to BFMTV journalists present at the site, 445 civilians were buried here during the Russian occupation.
• Bodies exhumed for identification
Currently, the bodies are being unearthed to be counted and identified. On Sky News, Serguiï Botvinov, a regional police officer, spoke about the possible circumstances of the deaths.
“We know that some died (by bullets), others died from artillery fire, trauma from mine explosions. Some were killed in air strikes” and “many bodies have yet to be identified,” he explained.
According to AFP journalists in Izioum, most of the unnamed crosses are made of raw wood, the named ones are more of varnished or painted wood, sometimes even decorated with flowers.
The government official for the search for missing persons, Oleg Kotenko, gives in particular this example of a family “buried there, with a small child. They were killed, there are witnesses from the same building, they saw what happened, they passed and buried these people here.”
“The graves that do not have names are those of people (found) on the street,” he said, adding that “a lot of people died of hunger.”
At the scene, an AFP journalist was also able to verify that at least one body with its hands tied had been exhumed on Friday. According to him, it was impossible to immediately establish whether it was a civilian or a soldier, due to the state of the body. This was confirmed by journalists from BFMTV, who also mention “traces of strangulation.” But according to the prosecutors present at the scene, more precise investigations must be carried out.
• The graves discovered thanks to a video uploaded to social networks
According to Oleg Kotenko, the discovery of the graves in the Izioum forest was made thanks to a video uploaded to social networks and that AFP was able to see.
One man wearing a cap with the Russian flag said in particular that he must take care of the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers and “bury them because Ukraine doesn’t want them.”
“Negotiations with the Ukrainian authorities did not work, they refused to take the bodies, so we buried them ourselves in the city cemetery,” it is heard there.
Another video shows bodies of soldiers, wrapped in body bags and taken from the morgue.
• The UN wants to send a team to investigate
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights immediately indicated that it wanted to send a team to Izioum “soon” to “determine the circumstances of the death of these people.”
“When mass graves are discovered, it is important to check whether they were soldiers or civilians, whether they were killed or killed in combat, or of natural causes exacerbated by lack of medical care,” said Elizabeth Throssell, a spokeswoman for the High Commission. , during the regular UN briefing in Geneva.
Since the beginning of the war, Russia has denied all the abuses of which it is accused in kyiv. Over the Izium mass grave, Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russian forces of being “murderers” and “torturers”.
On September 9, the UN reported that its human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine had so far documented more than 400 arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances by Russian forces in Ukraine.
The mission is due to publish a full report on the impact of the invasion on human rights in the country on September 27.
Source: BFM TV
