In a dense pine forest on the edge of this newly liberated city, a simple wooden cross lay on the ground with only the number 125 written in black marker. From the shallow grave behind him were lifted the remains of a man dressed in a tattered overcoat and black boots. It is not known who he was or how he died, only that he was one of 445 residents of Izyum who were buried here during the six months that this city was under Russian occupation. On Friday, Ukrainian prosecutors began the gruesome process of excavating the sprawling site and trying to figure out what had happened to those buried here. One grave at a time, teams of criminal investigators dressed in plastic blue coveralls dug up the loose brown soil, then lifted the body out with their gloved hands, searching the pockets for any documents. Most were unidentifiable: after exhuming a body from grave 124, investigators wrote only “female” on the white body bag, which was then zipped shut. More than six months after the invasion saw Russian troops repeatedly commit war crimes against civilians in other parts of the country, investigators already believe what happened in Izyum belongs on the same list as the atrocities inflicted on towns such as Bucha and Mariupol. MURAT YUKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: GRAPHIC NEWS “One of the bodies exhumed behind me had his hands tied and a rope around his neck. For me, as an experienced prosecutor, these are the indicators of war crimes. But we have to investigate,” said Oleksander Ilienkov, deputy prosecutor for the Kharkiv region where Izyum is located. He compared what appears to have happened in Izyum to Bucha, a suburb of Kiev where 458 bodies were discovered after a month-long occupation earlier in the war. Mr Ilyenkov said he worried there would be more terrifying discoveries as Ukrainian troops continued a counter-offensive that over the past 10 days has freed a large swath of eastern Ukraine from Russian control. “Russia is leaving behind death everywhere and must be held responsible,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address Thursday night, shortly after the site was initially discovered. Russia has dismissed evidence of war crimes committed in Bukha and elsewhere as “fakes”. Most of the graves outside Izyum – which could represent the largest mass burial discovered in Europe since the Balkan wars of the 1990s – were marked with just a simple cross and a number. Others, with only a stick. Only a few had additional information written about who was buried there or when they died. In the center of the makeshift cemetery, 17 dead Ukrainian soldiers were thrown together into a single pit. Prosecutors say they were shot at close range. The soldiers’ hands were tied and there were signs that they had been tortured before their executions. Torture and execution of prisoners of war are war crimes under the Geneva Conventions. Dead civilians were buried in individual plots. Among the dated crosses, the majority died in March, during the three-week battle that saw Russian troops capture Izyum after first pounding the town with a pre-war population of 45,000 with airstrikes and heavy artillery. Near the edges of the site, someone has hung black memorial plaques on six crosses. All six died on March 9, the day Izyum residents say 53 people were killed in a Russian airstrike that leveled an apartment building on Pervomayska Street in the center of town. Three were members of the same family: 5-year-old Olesya Stolpakova and her parents Elena, 31, and Dmitry, 33. Another of the dead was identified as 8-year-old Aleksandra Ponyukhnova. Another forty-five were said to have died in another airstrike in early March that destroyed two more apartment buildings. Those with more recent death dates written on their gravestones appear to have been mostly elderly. Izyum was left without electricity, natural gas and running water from March to August, and residents say the price of drugs at local pharmacies – those that remained open – nearly quadrupled at the same time as jobs disappeared and pensions remained unpaid. There appears to have been a system with the numbers written on the graves, although Ukrainian prosecutors say they have yet to figure out what that was. Someone first wrote the numbers 6 and 7 on two graves near the beginning of the site, then scratched those numbers off and wrote 41 and 42 instead, as if the numbers corresponded somewhere on a list. Lt. Taras Berezovets, press officer for Ukraine’s First Special Forces Brigade, said many of the dead were initially buried in the gardens and yards of their homes before the Russians ordered all the bodies exhumed and taken to the makeshift cemetery outside from the city. The Russians appear to have dug tank emplacements around the site, suggesting it doubled as a military base. “They didn’t want people to know how many died. No one had access, so no one knew how many were here,” Lt. Berezovets said. On Friday, the handful of locals who followed police and media into the forest cemetery were horrified and unsurprised by what they saw. “I came to see the truth about what happened here,” said Serhiy Shtenko, a 33-year-old developer who said he was looking for the graves of friends and neighbors killed in the airstrike on Pervomayska Street. He said the size of the grave was about what he expected after six grueling months of war and occupation. “I saw how they took dead bodies every day. It’s what I thought it would be.”
Crosses on the graves at the mass burial site in the city of Izum, Ukraine. Anton Skyba 1 of 14 Coroners work at the makeshift cemetery in Izium, Ukraine. Anton Skyba 2 of 14 Mine clearance around the graves in the makeshift cemetery where a mass burial site was discovered in the recently liberated city of Izium, Ukraine. Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail 3 out of 14 Oleksander Illenkov, the deputy prosecutor of the Kharkiv region at the makeshift cemetery in Izium, Ukraine. Anton Skyba 4 out of 14 Members of Ukraine’s Emergency Service rest as they work at a mass grave site during an exhumation in Izium.GLEB GARANICH/Reuters 5 out of 14 Ukrainians work at a mass grave site during an exhumation in the town of Izium, which was recently liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. GLEB GARANICH/Reuters 6 out of 14 Specialists carry a body as they work at a mass burial site in the city of Izium.GLEB GARANICH/Reuters 7 out of 14 Crosses with numbers are seen at a mass grave site in Izium, Ukraine.GLEB GARANICH/Reuters 8 out of 14 Members of the Ukrainian Emergency Service work at a mass burial site in Izium.GLEB GARANICH/Reuters 9 out of 14 Specialists carry a body as they work at a mass grave site during an exhumation as Russia’s offensive on Ukraine continues, in the town of Izium, recently liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, September 16, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb GaranichGLEB GARANICH/Reuters 10 out of 14 Police and experts work at a mass burial site in the city of Izium.GLEB GARANICH/Reuters 11 of 14 Ukrainian soldiers guard a mass grave site during an exhumation in the city of Izium.GLEB GARANICH/Reuters 12 of 14 This satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows the site where Ukrainian forces found hundreds of graves in a pine forest near Izium, Ukraine. Planet Labs PBC/The Associated Press 13 of 14 A Ukrainian soldier walks among graves of mostly unidentified civilians and Ukrainian soldiers in the town of Izium.STRINGER/Reuters 14 of 14
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