Ukrainian forces have made a macabre new discovery in the Kharkiv region (northeast), where they continue to push back their Russian enemy. At least 24 civilians were found shot dead in their car near Kupyansk, regional governor Oleh Synehoubov announced on Telegram on Saturday.
“Convoy of cars with dead civilians on board discovered”, he said. The last preliminary statement communicated establishes at “twenty-four people including a pregnant woman and thirteen children” the number of victims. According to Mr. Synehoubov, “the occupants [l’armée russe] attacked these civilians who were trying to escape the bombardments”. “It’s cruelty that has no justification”he denounced. “Police and experts went to the scene” et ” An investigation is underway “he specified.
On Friday, a team from Agence France-Presse had seen at least eleven bodies of civilians, killed in the same way, on a road abandoned by the Russians during their withdrawal from the region last week. The convoy of vehicles that AFP saw on Friday was precisely on a road leading from the village of Kyrylivka, 70 kilometers east of Kharkiv, when it was targeted. On the spot, the corpses were still there, inside or next to six vehicles. A minibus was completely burned, four bodies, one of which appeared to be that of a child, lying on the seats.
The place where the dozen civilians were found is at a place where fighting between Ukrainians and Russians took place recently, the forces of kyiv carrying out a major counter-offensive in the region. Faced with significant military difficulties, the Russian soldiers retreated further east across the Oskil River, but the Ukrainians have since managed to cross it, marking a major success for Kyiv. whose army surrounds the Lyman Pocket.
A pro-Russian separatist official had, for his part, accused Thursday from Moscow the Ukrainian army of having fired on a convoy of civilians in the Kharkiv region, killing thirty people, without however providing more details. Since the beginning of the invasion, kyiv has denounced abuses by the invader’s troops, accusations systematically rejected by Russia.