HS followed on the spot in Izjum, when the bodies of Ukrainians were dug up from the newly discovered mass grave.
Izjum
In Ukrainian in the pine forest on the edge of Izjum stand unadorned wooden crosses. Most of them have no name, only a number: 125, 330, 331.
The smell is indescribable because the graves at the foot of the crosses have been dug open.
There are piles of sand everywhere, flies are buzzing in the air. Shovelers, protected by face masks, standing at the bottom of the graves without jewelry, lift up the curled-up bodies that the Russian troops have buried there.
One of the dead has black shoes.
Most of the graves only had a number, but a few also had a name.
Medicines and keys, among other things, were removed from the body’s jacket pocket.
in northeastern Ukraine located in Izjum, with a population of just under 50,000, was held by the Russians since the end of March. A week ago on Saturday, the city was liberated.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, more than 460 people have been buried in this forest, maybe more. 445 of them are civilians. From the dates written on the crosses, you can see that many have died in the early days of the occupation, when bombs and cannon fire rained down on the small town.
In the first communications from the Ukrainians, the burial site was referred to as a mass grave, but the vast majority of the graves, at least now visible, are individual.
The bodies lifted from them are wearing civilian clothes. Many are wrapped in various colorful fabrics. There are also women and children in the graves.
The displayed corpses are openly visible, but most of them are already so rotten that it is difficult to make accurate observations.
The real ones there is one of the mass graves here, which, according to the Ukrainian authorities, contains the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. At its bottom, researchers dressed in white protective suits continue to dig.
By early afternoon on Friday, the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers had been found in the mass grave.
“It seems that they were shot at close range”, the head of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Kharkiv region, who followed the excavation work on site Oleksandr Ilyenkov stated the soldiers.
“I am an experienced prosecutor. I could see that there is reason to suspect war crimes here, but the matter needs to be investigated before the actual conclusions are drawn.”
In total, dozens of police officers, representatives of the prosecutor’s office, war crime investigators and rescuers participated in the investigation of the grave site found in the forest on Friday.
The forest was quiet compared to the number of people. Explosions could be heard in the background as deminers continued their work nearby.
Grave forest investigation began two days ago, the lead police investigator standing next to the duct tape Serhiy Bolvinov tells. First, the forest was cleared of mines, and on Friday morning they started to lift the bodies up.
The bodies lifted up are in bad condition, as some were buried already in March. Each body was measured, and the sand from the grave was slipped into a small bag.
Bolvinov says that part of the body has its hands tied. HS was not able to verify the sighting, but a reporter from the news agency AFP who was on the spot also said that he saw at least one body whose hands were tied.
Bolvinov says that the same teams working in Izjum are the same as were in Bucha and Irpin.
“The first body we picked up was a man with a rope around his neck. Now we are investigating what has happened. We’ll let you know as soon as we know more. But just identifying the victims takes time.”
According to Oleksandr Ilyenkov’s estimate, more bodies may be found than estimated, more than 500. There are still many missing people in Izjum, whose fate is unknown.
At least the numbers of the graves were marked on the body bags.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyi has already had time to compare Izjum to Butša. In its tweet, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine spoke of mass graves in the plural.
However, the next thing is important to remember, because this is emphasized by everyone on the spot in Izjum: it is still unclear how and why the people buried in the pine soil have died.
Governor Oleg Synegubov had said, according to Reuters reporters present, that many of the bodies showed signs of violent death, but Serhi Bolvinov told HS that the details were still unclear.
Now the investigation begins. War crimes are possible, but some of those buried may have died in bombings and airstrikes or of natural causes. It’s impossible to say for sure at this point.
The bodies were measured and a soil sample was taken from each grave.
When HS on Friday spoke with the residents of Izjum, they said that there was a cemetery there even before the war. A new cemetery managed by the Russians has been built next to it. The people of Izjum appear in the story under their first names, because the matter is sensitive.
Izjum has been heavily shelled throughout the war of aggression and is still being shelled, because the battle front is only a few kilometers away.
38 years old Žhenia told HS that if someone died during the occupation, there were two cemeteries accepted by the Russians. One was in the city, the other was this place in the pine forest.
When Žhenia’s mother died of a heart defect a few months ago, Žhenia got to choose which cemetery her mother would be taken to. He decided to bury the mother in the garden, but that did not suit the Russians. The mother ended up in a cemetery in the city, where other relatives were also buried.
Žheni does not know about possible war crimes in Izjum.
“The Russians imposed very strict curfews. No one knows for sure what happened in this city at night.”
To Larissa the introduced woman tells about burials during the Russian era in a similar way.
If there was a devastating airstrike, the Russians would collect the bodies from the streets and take them to the forest for burial. If the relatives had already managed to bury their deceased loved one in the urban area, the body was dug up and moved, the townspeople said.
The names were removed from the crosses and replaced with a number.
“There were two options. If you could afford to pay 8,000 hryvnias, you could get decorations for the grave. If there was no money, the Russians took the body and buried it without decorations,” Larissa told HS.
8,000 hryvnias means about 216 euros. You hardly see decorated graves in the pine forest.
There are just a lot of researchers, flies – and the media.
On Friday, more than a hundred Ukrainian officials participated in the opening of the graves.
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