Kharkiv’s missile ‘graveyard’ reveals scale of Moscow’s assault
O‘It is difficult to damage a tank with such a projectile, but it is easy enough to kill people’
n a quiet industrial estate in Kharkiv, the mangled and charred remains of more than 1,000 Russian rockets and artillery shells are being collected.
Each chunk of metal is evidence of the scale of Moscow’s daily long-range attacks on Ukraine’s second largest city and the surrounding region.
When The Daily Telegraph visited the “graveyard” for Russian missiles yesterday, Dmytro Chubenko held one particular remnant of a strike on a civilian target aloft.
“It is difficult to damage a tank with such a projectile, but it is easy enough to kill people,” the spokesman for Kharkiv’s regional prosecutor said.
Since the beginning of the war, around 1,500 civilians have been killed and 2,500 more wounded in the north-eastern region, which borders Russia, by Moscow’s forces.
War crimes investigators have painstakingly gathered each and every weapon used against civilian targets in Kharkiv.
Banned cluster bombs, Iskander cruise missiles, artillery shells and non-guided rockets that had rained down on residential areas have been laid out for further inspection.
The value of the weapons that have been used in these alleged civilian strikes is said to be more than $100 million (£86 million).
Some are more intact than others, Mr Chubenko said, demonstrating Russia’s use of old and failing weapons.
Among the wreckage are what appeared to be banned cluster bombs, which scatter dozens of bomblets indiscriminately over hundreds of square metres.
Elsewhere lies the twisted remains of an Iskander cruise missile recovered in almost 100 pieces, its casing, jet
‘It is important that experts work with this evidence, because it is difficult to imagine the scale when you have not seen it’
engine and circuit boards all discovered broken apart, after a deadly strike on Kharkiv’s city hall.
Dozens of artillery shells also lie among the devastation in Saltivka, a vast Soviet-era housing estate, in northern Kharkiv, that was bombarded in the early days of the war.
Every weapon that has been collected had been aimed at Kharkiv, with most marked with the exact details of the attack, including death toll, geographical location and more specific details on the hardware.
There are other similar secretive stores for munitions retrieved from attacks on the wider Kharkiv region.
“These remains of ammunition are material evidence of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine,” Mr Chubenko said.
“The physical presence of these remains illustrates the scale of the situation, but also record violations according to international and Ukrainian regulations.”
Kyiv has said it is investigating more than 20,000 war crimes and crimes of aggression by Russian forces across the country.
Kharkiv’s prosecutor has invited British, French and Dutch officials to its missile “graveyards” in its quest for international justice.
“It is important that international experts work with this evidence, because it is difficult to imagine the scale when you have not seen it,” Mr Chubenko said.
Samples will also be shipped to The Hague, he added, in order for Ukraine to bolster its case for Vladimir Putin to face a war crimes tribunal.
But the prosecutor’s spokesman also stressed that studying the rockets, shells and cruise missiles helps Ukraine’s military to understand the enemy’s tactics.
In several cases, experts have discovered the presence of Westernproduced components inside Russia’s more high-tech weaponry, Mr Chubenko said.
“Military specialists have been studying munitions chips in order to understand how to counter them and in order to somehow close supplies to Russia,” he added.
Moscow’s arsenal of long-range weapons is believed to be running low, with its forces using rockets and artillery more sparingly than ever.
But, for Mr Chubenko, the collection of spent munitions is only expected to grow as Russia continues to target more civilian infrastructure than ever in the hope of forcing Ukraine into submission this winter.