KYIV (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday many Ukrainians were buried at various sites in the newly-recaptured northeast including whole families and people who were tortured, likening the aftermath to Russia’s withdrawal from near Kyiv months ago.
In an interview at his presidential office, he told Reuters an investigation was underway with international assistance and that there was evidence of Russian war crimes in those areas.
“As of today, there are 450 dead people, buried. But there are others, separate burials of many people. Tortured people. Entire families in certain territories,” he said.
Asked if there was evidence of war crimes, he said: “All this is there. Investigative commissions with international partners, joint investigative commissions,” he said.
“Our prosecutors are also working with international ones. There is some evidence, and assessments are being conducted, Ukrainian and international, and this is very important for us, for the world to recognise this.”
Russia denies targeting civilians and has said in the past that accusations of human rights abuses are a smear campaign.
The governor of Kharkiv region, Oleh Synhubov, told reporters on Friday at one of the burial sites in the city of Izium that some bodies exhumed there had been found with their hands tied behind their backs.
Moscow has not commented on the mass burial site in Izium, which was a Russian frontline stronghold before Ukraine’s counter-offensive forced its forces to flee.
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Gareth Jones)
