Jan Lipvasky, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said on Saturday that Russia’s attacks “against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent” in the 21st century. “We must not overlook it. We support the punishment of all war criminals,” he wrote in a message on Twitter. “I call for the speedy establishment of a special international court to prosecute the crime of aggression.” The appeal follows the discovery by Ukrainian authorities of around 450 graves outside the former Russian-held town of Izyum, with some of the exhumed bodies showing signs of torture. Zelensky, in his afternoon speech, said that “new evidence of torture was obtained” from the bodies buried there. “More than 10 torture chambers have already been found in various liberated cities and towns in the Kharkiv region,” he added, describing the discovery of electric torture devices. “That’s what the Nazis did. That’s what the Russians do. And they will be held accountable in the same way – both on the battlefield and in courtrooms,” he said, using the term “Russians” for “Russian fascists.” Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid, writing from Kharkiv, said the situation in Izyum looks “terrible on many levels”. “Izyum is now a deserted city, completely destroyed. There is hardly a building that is not at least partially damaged, and I am talking about political targets here – apartment buildings, schools, pharmacies, the church – a very desolate picture,” Abdel-Hamid said. “It’s a place where you see the true cost of this war. It is a city that has been besieged, that has been fiercely fought between the two sides. It is now under the control of Ukraine. You see the soldiers roaming the streets, but there is hardly any sign of life.”
“Probably 1,000 were tortured and killed”
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the mass graves likely provided more evidence that Russia is committing war crimes in its pro-Western neighbour. French President Emmanuel Macron described what happened in Izyum as atrocities. The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Ukrainian parliament, Dmytro Lubinets, said that “probably more than 1,000 Ukrainian citizens were tortured and killed in the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region.” The United Nations in Geneva has said it hopes to send a team to determine the circumstances of the death. The macabre discoveries came just over five months after the Russian army, driven out of Bucha near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, left behind hundreds of civilian bodies, many bearing signs of torture and summary executions. On Thursday, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin to face the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Ukraine. US President Joe Biden meanwhile warned his Russian counterpart against using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in the wake of heavy losses in its war in Ukraine. “Do not. Don’t do it. Don’t do it,” Biden said, in an excerpt from an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes that aired Friday night. “You would change the face of war unlike anything since World War II,” Biden said. Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, writing from Washington, said the “CIA director in April warned Congress that there was a possibility that President Putin could develop nuclear devices.” “It is also important to note that President Putin in 2020 signed a Russian military doctrine, which clearly states that Russia will use nuclear devices if other countries use nuclear devices against them, but then – and this is the key point – they will it could also respond with nuclear weapons to the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened,” Hanna said. “Many military experts do not see the possibility of Putin using a nuclear weapon. However, many say that this does not rule out the fact that it can threaten the use, in other words, escalate, de-escalate, bring the parties to the negotiating table.
“I push them back”
On the ground, Ukrainian forces have retaken thousands of square kilometers in recent weeks, thanks to a counteroffensive in the northeast, and are now threatening enemy positions in the south as fighting and shelling continue. The Russians “are angry because our army is pushing them back in its counterattack,” said Svitlana Spuk, a 42-year-old worker in Kryvyi Rih, a southern town and Zelensky’s hometown, which was flooded after the Russians destroyed a dam. missiles. Synegubov said an 11-year-old girl was killed by rockets in the area. Pavlo Kirilenko, governor of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, which has been partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014, said on social media that a thermal power plant was “bombed by Russian invaders” on Saturday morning in Mykolayivka. Ukrainian firefighters were battling the blaze, he said, adding that Russian shelling had led to interruptions in drinking water supplies. “The occupiers are deliberately targeting infrastructure in the area to try to cause as much damage as possible, mainly to the civilian population,” he said. It had earlier reported that two civilians had been killed and 11 wounded in the past 24 hours by Russian fire.
