After liberation, the discovery of horror. As the Ukrainian army continues to advance in the east of the country, hundreds of graves have been discovered in a forest on the outskirts of Izium, a town just retaken from the Russians in the Kharkiv region. President Zelensky even spoke of a veritable “mass grave”. War scene or war crime? While several “torture rooms” have been discovered in this same locality, we take stock.
What have we discovered?
Launched since the beginning of September in a particularly effective counter-offensive in the east of the country, the Ukrainian army notably liberated the town of Izioum, which had more than 45,000 inhabitants before the conflict. It was in a surrounding forest that the authorities discovered what President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the spot Wednesday, described as a “mass grave”. A video, published on the site of the English news channel Sky News, shows a forest in which line up dozens and dozens of wooden crosses, planted next to each other, in a sort of improvised cemetery. Several international journalists, including teams from the Associated Press and AFP, who were able to go there, confirm the presence of hundreds of graves, some of which contain several bodies.
Other corpses were also unearthed inside the city itself, under the rubble of houses in particular.
About 200 wooden crosses were also discovered on the outskirts of the town of Izioum, on the edge of a cemetery. Men dressed in white coveralls began to exhume bodies at the site on Friday morning, and around 20 body bags had already been identified. In addition, the Ukrainian police chief, Igor Klymenko, announced the discovery of six “torture rooms” in Izium, and two others in Balakliïa, still in the Kharkiv region.
How many bodies have been found?
Difficult to say at this stage, especially since several figures are advanced. Sergei Botvinov, a regional police official, first mentioned, on Sky News, “440 bodies” in the forest. Mykhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky, counts for his part on Twitter “450 graves”.
Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior minister, who went to Izioum with Volodymyr Zelensky, told the BBC on Thursday that 1,000 bodies had been discovered.
“The figure of 1,000 for the moment is unverifiable”, however tempered the French journalist present on the spot, Loup Bureau, on Twitter, specifying that because of the long duration of the Russian occupation, it was necessary to look for the bodies ” in the city and its surroundings” because they could have been buried “a bit everywhere”. In the Sky News video, some graves have prominent numbers, suggesting that the dead are indeed many.
How were these Ukrainians killed?
That is the whole question, and it is still too early to tell. The city of Izium had been the subject of deadly fighting in the spring before being taken by the Russian army, which made it a strategic supply node. In view of this context, it therefore appears that a certain number of civilians were killed in artillery fire, air strikes or by mines.
“Izioum is largely destroyed (…). Many civilian homes are destroyed,” confirmed Anton Gerashchenko, on site Wednesday. In addition to these victims of heavy weapons, there are civilians who died “due to lack of access to care or resources”, underlines Cédric Mas, military historian. Were there any executions? At least one body with its hands bound by rope was exhumed yesterday, but witnesses told Reuters they saw several in that position.
“For the moment, we have a proven excess mortality, with bodies. The investigation will tell us whether or not these are war crimes,” points out Cédric Mas again. Because the conditions in which the victims died are precisely decisive. “The Ukrainian sources themselves announce that there would be victims of bombardments among the corpses. Which would not be a war crime” in itself, explains Thibault Fouillet, researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research and specialist in contemporary conflicts. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between a mass grave – linked to the large number of deceased persons, relatively classic for such a conflict – from a mass grave, “with executions of civilians and soldiers, which constitute a war crime”. , nuances the specialist. It is precisely to determine the nature of the deaths “that the presence of international investigators is so important, as it was at the time in Boutcha”, he adds.