Destroyed cities and villages of Kyiv, Chernihiv region, Sumy region, Kharkiv region have a common tragedy experienced during the occupation. After the liberation of part of the Kharkiv region from the invading troops, mass burials and torture chambers were found in the territory from Volchansk to Izyum.
The bombed city, mass graves and torture sites where locals were mocked — this is how the Russian army left Izyum. Kremlin propaganda rejected all accusations and promptly responded to footage of the fired Izyum, manipulating painful topics.
“Lenta”:
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained the finding of burials in Ukraine's Izyum. This is reported by the correspondent of “Lenty.ru”.
According to him, the Ukrainian authorities demonstrated not mass burials, but a cemetery with ordinary graves. “Each grave was with an Orthodox cross, that is, people were buried, and Ukrainians began to excavate them,” he said.
The propaganda also spread misinformation with a photo of the grave of the family who died in the house on March 9 from a Russian plane bomb.
“Reporter”: “It is worth paying attentionthe fact that the date of death is indicated on the graves as March 9, 2022. The whole piquancy of the situation is that Russian troops took Izyum on April 1. Thus, all the burials before that in this area were done by the Ukrainian authorities and now they are tearing up the graves of those who they buried on the cameras of the media. So who mocked people and tied their hands behind their backs before killing them?”
Daria Gerasimchuk, Advisor to the Office of the President on Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation, reportedthat on March 9, the Russian army killed six members of the same family by dropping an air bomb on a house in Izyum. Then she aimed to get him out of the tank. At least 44 people died under the rubble.
“In the town where 447 bodies of Ukrainians were found, 3 mass burials were found. Some of these people were brutally murdered, many of them were martyred before death,” - Danylo Pavlov captioned the photo on his Instagram.
The most cynical statements about the tragedy in Izyum came from propagandists from Ukraine.
Podolyaka Video
“It is worth noting that the photographer Maloletka was called to serve another farce in Izyum. The same one who became famous for photographs from Mariupol, in which he allegedly filmed the consequences of the “bombing” of the maternity hospital and other fakes.
Supposedly, a trifle. But very revealing.”
Podolyaka-video is the website of Yuriy Podolyaka, an analyst and military expert, as he calls himself, in fact a propagandist blogger from Ukraine. After the Revolution of Dignity, Podolyak moved to Russia. He was sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prisonfor justifying Russian aggression and collaborative activities.
“The scriptwriters of “Book-2” amaze with their stupidity: the body they took from the grave has fresh blood and clean ropes on their hands. Perhaps this is an actor in makeup, but it is likely that the person was specifically killed for the “truthfulness” of the staging.
According to French journalist Adrian Bocke, many corpses were brought to Izyum for a bloody photo shoot,” Podolyak explains, drawing parallels with Bucha.
The propagandist refers to the words of a former military man from France, Adrian Bocquet. Adrian Bocke has repeatedly been exposed for lying and spreading Kremlin propaganda around the world. He even lied about his military career. He told about it StopFakewith reference to investigations The Liberation.
StopFake found outthat his ex-wife is of Russian origin, and his daughter's name is Lena.
“A few days ago, a mass burial was found in the vicinity of the newly liberated city of Izium. More than 400 graves. Most of them are nameless. It is impossible to look at it, but everyone should see it!”, - Konstantin Liberov captioned the photo from Izyum on Instagram.
Another topic for manipulation was the tragedy of the family of a soldier, whose body was found in a mass grave. His wife recognized him by the tattoo and the yellow-blue bracelet on his arm.
X-True
“The second such scene of “atrocities of the Russian army”, as it was in Bucha, cannot be done by the Kiev regime in Izyum; the truth about the skeleton's hand with silicone bracelets in the colors of the Ukrainian flag opened and came out.
The hand with the bracelet, the photo of which became a symbol of Russia's accusations of “genocide”, belongs to the “dryer” from Nikopol Sergey Sova. He served in the 93rd Brigade “Cold Yar”.
The hand with the bracelet was called by propagandists “a symbol of Kyiv propaganda”. Footage with a bracelet on the hand of a soldier killed by the Russians in Izyum stunned society. In contrast to propaganda messages, it became a symbol of the atrocities of the invaders.
X-True says that the Russians had to hide Ukrainian soldiers because, they say, the leadership of the Armed Forces refused to take them from the Izyum morgue.
“Military Armed ForcesRussians did not leave to rot and decompose in the open air for the joy of local homeless dogs and wolves, which are found in the Izyum forests, but buried,” writes the hostile publication.
“Detector Media“ refutedThis fake:
“If the leadership of the Armed Forces delayed the operation to transfer the bodies of dead soldiers from occupied Izyum, then there could be only one reason for this — the constant shelling of the city by the Russians. On one of the crosses in the forest it is written: “Armed Forces of Ukraine, 17 persons, m. Raisin, from the morgue.” At the same time, part of the graves without crosses. In addition, the graves of about 20 Ukrainian servicemen with their hands tied were found nearby. This may indicate that they have been captured, Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmitry Lubinets said in his Telegram.
The body of children's writer Vladimir Vakulenko, who was shot by the Russians in the spring of 2022, was found in a mass burial under Izyum at number 319. This was confirmed by DNA examinations.
There are 74 bodies left.unrecognized. Most of them are burials in Izyum: 56 bodies. We cannot identify them due to the lack of relatives with whom we can make a DNA comparison,” the head of the Kharkiv National Police Volodymyr Tymoshko explained to the journalist.Gwara Media” as of March 2024.
Mass burials and catechisms were also found in the de-occupied Liman and Svyatogorsk region of Donetsk region.
In particular, two mass burials were found in Liman, one with civilian, the other with military and more than 130 individual graves.
They were buried in trenches, some of them with numbers instead of names.
“Among civilians exhumed in the north of Donetsk region, 85 are men, 66 are women, 5 children, the gender of another 10 people has not been established.” The police clarified that people died from mine blast and shrapnel wounds as a result of Russian shelling, as well as from natural causes, there are bodies with signs of violent death,” — reports”Radio Svoboda“.
Associated Presspublished Exclusive photosand video materialsmass burials in Izyum, recaptured by Ukrainian troops.
The first who managed to visit the site of mass burials and interview officials were a video journalist APVasilisa Stepanenko and photographer Yevgeny Maloletka. As he writes AP, the way was indicated to them by the local inhabitants of Izyum.
The military had just begun to deport the area and prepare for the exhumation planned for the next day. APreported that “the Ukrainian authorities invited international media to the burial site to begin the exhumation”.
Associated Pressreleased exclusive footage in the evening immediately after the video address of the President of Ukraine.
In the first 12 hours, footage from Izyum was distributed by well-known broadcasters of the world. Photos of Yevgeny Maloletka were published by almost all major publications, such as The Washington Post, The New York Times.
British media reported that “AP coverage as evidence of a mass burial has been confirmed by leading media and officials.”
How tellspublications, journalists APArriving at the burial site, they saw graves marked with simple wooden crosses. Some of them had people's names written on them and flowers hung.
Referring to Ukrainian officials, British media tellsabout a mass grave with more than 440 bodies. Some of those buried in the pit were shot, others died from shelling. Many of the bodies had not yet been identified at the time. Numerous “torture chambers” were also found, where both citizens of Ukraine and foreigners were held “in absolutely inhuman conditions”.
Journalists of the agency Reutersalso visited the site of mass burials in the Izyum forest. There they met a local resident Vladimir Kolesnik, who was looking for the graves of his relatives.
“Holding handsa carefully written list of names and numbers, citizen Volodymyr Kolesnyk walked among the graves, looking for relatives who, he said, were killed in an air strike on an apartment building shortly before the fall of the city in April, when the invaders swept through the northeastern district of Kharkov,” tellsBritish media.
19 September 2022 Reuters reportedabout the first results of the exhumation. Referring to the governor of the Kharkiv region Oleg Synegubov, Ukrainian forensic experts exhumed 146 bodies of mostly civilians, some of them showing signs of violent death, among the exhumed bodies were two children.
And already on October 2, 2022 Associated Presspublished investigationsabout the tortures arranged by the Russians in Izyum. The investigation is based on what journalists saw in the forest and interviews with the participants of those events who survived, as well as with the police.
Journalists heard from officials that mass burials were heavily mined, and they saw bodies with their hands tied.
They managed to communicate with 15 victims of torture, some of whom were subjected to torture more than once. They spoke to families whose relatives were missing.
APhas testimony from a local doctor who treated people with injuries similar to torture, such as “shots to the arms and legs, broken bones, and severe bruises and burns.”
“An Associated Press investigationshowed that the torture of Russians in Izyum was arbitrary, widespread and absolutely routine both for civilians and for the military throughout the city,” the newspaper said.
Journalists APfound 10 torture sites in Izyum, up to 5 of them were accessed. The victims were found in the police station, kindergarten and residential complex.
The investigation article also contains mention of torturers in the local school and the garage of a medical clinic. In the latter, men and women were kept. The women's room was the closest to the room of the Russian soldiers.
The victims were thrown into pits of water, beaten with sticks, hung by their legs, tortured with gas masks and electrodes - this is all that the victims dared to tell. Journalists APfound gas masks in two schools in Izum.
“Torture in any formduring an armed conflict is a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions, whether applied to prisoners of war or civilians,” the publication concluded.
The material was worked on:
Researcher of the topic, author of the text: Yana Yevmenova
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Literary Editor: Julia Futei
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