Trawling the forest of graves
Masked against the stench, investigators search mass burial site for evidence of war crimes by Putin’s invaders
UKRAINIAN investigators are trawling through newly discovered mass graves to gather evidence against Vladimir Putin and his generals for a war crimes trial.
The remains of hundreds of corpses have been found on the edge of Izyum, a city liberated in last week’s spectacular counter-offensive against Russian occupation.
Forensic investigators wearing masks against the overwhelming stench have been tirelessly digging through the site, witnessed by The Mail on Sunday.
The extent of Russian terror in this part of eastern Ukraine is only now beginning to emerge.
Many of the dead have been found with their hands tied behind their back – believed to be evidence of torture and executions in cold blood, according to local lead police investigator, Serhiy Bolivnov.
As officials painstakingly amass evidence, every examination is recorded on video. The removal of each body is overseen by two medical-legal experts and a war crimes investigator from the Prosecutor General’s office.
Bodies will be taken to morgues in Kharkiv for post-mortems, with the results set to be handed over to the United Nations and other international bodies ahead of possible war crimes trials.
Since the start of the war, Izyum’s population has dropped from 50,000 to just 12,000 – many too old or infirm to leave. At present the city has no gas, electricity or water.
One elderly woman, Yevdovika, has been left homeless after her apartment was destroyed by Russian shelling.
Standing in a devastated cityscape, peppered with ruins, she said: ‘The Russians, what swine, why did they come to Ukraine?
They destroyed everything. They said they were here to liberate us. What did they liberate us from? From a pleasant life that was so wonderful a few months ago.’
A 50-year-old man, Maksym, told how he had been captured and tortured by Russian security agents, having stayed to care for his elderly mother.
He said he was repeatedly beaten and given electric shocks as he resisted his torturers’ demands for names of resistance fighters. ‘They used an apparatus that looked like an old-fashioned telephone with a hand crank which generated an electric shock by turning the handle. The quicker they turned it, the more intense the shock.
‘They attached electrodes to my hands and my whole body quivered from pain.’
His limbs bear the marks of the handcuffs and leg-irons he was forced to wear.
Maksym found the electrocution device left behind by his captors in their headlong rush to leave Izyum, and has handed it over as part of the evidence for war crimes trials.
Visiting Izyum, Ukrainian MP and ombudsman for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets predicted: ‘Very many such sites will be found.’
In recent weeks Ukrainian forces have recaptured large tracts of territory, liberating more than 150,000 of their fellow citizens and pushing back some of the occupying forces to the Russian border which they had streamed across when the invasion erupted on February 24.
Reacting to Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Vladimir Putin on Friday insisted Russia’s plans remain unchanged and threatened a ‘more serious’ response.