Ukrainians who returned to the northeastern region retaken in Kiev’s blitzkrieg earlier this month searched for their dead as Russian artillery and airstrikes continued to pound targets across eastern Ukraine. Five civilians were killed in Russian attacks in the eastern Donetsk region last day, and in Nikopoli, further west, several dozen residential buildings, gas pipelines and power lines were hit, regional governors said on Sunday. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Britain’s Ministry of Defense said Russian strikes on civilian infrastructure, including a power grid and a dam, had intensified over the past seven days. “Faced with setbacks on the front lines, Russia has likely expanded the locations it is prepared to strike in an effort to directly undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government,” he said in an intelligence briefing. On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address that authorities had found a mass grave containing the bodies of 17 soldiers in Izium, some of which he said bore signs of torture. Residents of Izium search for dead relatives in a forest grave where emergency workers began exhuming bodies last week. The cause of death for those in the grave has not yet been ascertained, although residents say some died in an airstrike. Ukrainian officials said last week they had found 440 bodies in the woods near Izium. They said most of the dead were civilians and the cause of death had not been ascertained. The Kremlin has not commented on the discovery of the graves, but in the past Moscow has repeatedly denied targeting civilians or committing atrocities. Walking among graves and trees in the forest where exhumations were taking place, Volodymyr Kolesnyk tried to match numbers written on wooden crosses with names on a carefully handwritten list to locate relatives he said had died in an airstrike in the early days of the war. Kolesnyk said he got the list from a local funeral home that dug up the graves. “They buried the bodies in sacks, without coffins, without anything. They didn’t allow me at first. They (Russians) said it was drugged and asked to wait,” he told Reuters on Saturday. Oleksandr Ilienkov, the head of the prosecutor’s office for the Kharkiv region, told Reuters at the scene on Friday: “One of the bodies (found) has evidence of a ligature pattern and a rope around the neck, hands tied,” adding that there were signs of violent causes of death for other bodies, but they would undergo a forensic examination. A Ukrainian soldier rests and smokes on a tractor as he tows a Russian tank, as Russia’s offensive on Ukraine continues, near the town of Izium, recently liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, September 17, 2022. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich read more The mayor of Izium said on Sunday that work at the site would continue for another two weeks. “The exhumation is underway, the graves are being dug and all the remains are being transported to Kharkiv,” Valery Marchenko told state television.
STILL SCARED
Elsewhere in the region, residents of cities recaptured after six months of Russian occupation returned with a mixture of joy and terror. read more “I still have this feeling that at any moment a shell might explode or a plane might fly,” said Nataliia Yelistratova, who traveled with her husband and daughter 80 kilometers (50 miles) by train from Kharkiv for her homeland. Balaklia to find her apartment building intact, but marked by the bombings. “I’m still scared to be here,” he said after discovering a piece of shrapnel in a wall. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not respond to the accusations, but on Friday rejected Ukraine’s swift counterattack and that Moscow would respond more forcefully if its troops came under further pressure. read more Such repeated threats have raised concerns that it could at some point turn to small nuclear weapons or chemical warfare. US President Joe Biden, asked what he would say to Putin if he considered using such weapons, replied: “Don’t do it. Don’t do it. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War II.” An excerpt of a comment in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” was released by CBS on Saturday. read more Some military analysts said the Russians could also carry out a nuclear attack at Zaporizhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant owned by Russia but run by Ukrainian personnel. Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for shelling around the plant that damaged buildings and disrupted power lines needed to keep it cool and safe. The plant has been reconnected to Ukraine’s electricity grid after one of its power lines was repaired, the United Nations nuclear watchdog said on Saturday. He warned, however, that the situation at the factory “remains precarious”. read more Ukraine has also launched a major offensive to recapture territory in the south, where it hopes to trap thousands of Russian troops cut off from supplies on the west bank of the Dnipro River and retake Kherson. Kherson is the only major city in Ukraine that Russia has occupied intact since the start of the war. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSign up Reporting from the Reuters offices Writing by Lincoln Feast, Raissa Kasolowsky and Tomasz Janowski Editing by William Mallard, Frances Kerry and Raissa Kasolowsky Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
