Zelensky pays surprise visit to recaptured Izium
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday visited an area of northeastern Ukraine that was recently retaken from Russian forces, witnessing large-scale devastation as prosecutors claimed that local residents had been tortured and killed during the half-year occupation.
Russian forces left the warscarred city last week as Ukraine pressed forward in a sweeping counteroffensive that has reclaimed vast swaths of territory in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region in a matter of days.
As Zelenskyy visited Izium, the Ukrainian flag was raised in front of the burned-out city hall building in the largely devastated town.
Apartment buildings are blackened by fire and pockmarked by artillery strikes. The entire centre of one residential building had collapsed, a gaping hole and piles of rubble where homes used to be.
“The view is very shocking but it is not shocking for me,” Zelenskyy said in brief comments to the press, “because we began to see the same pictures from Bucha, from the first de-occupied territories, so the same destroyed buildings, killed people.”
Bucha is a neighbourhood near Kyiv where the bodies of civilians, many of them bearing signs of torture, were found dumped in the streets, in mass graves and in yards after Russian forces
withdrew hastily in March.
Prosecutors say they have found six bodies bearing traces of torture in recently retaken villages in the Kharkiv region. They announced the creation of investigative teams.
“We have a terrible picture of what the occupiers did, particularly in the Kharkiv region. Such cities as Balakliia, Izium are standing in the same row as Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin,” said Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin.