Exhumed bodies show signs of torture: Zelensky

EU calls for an international tribunal after mass graves are found outside the newly liberated Ukrainian city of Izyum.

Members of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service carry a body exhumed from the mass burial site outside the city of Izyum on Saturday. Picture: Reuters

The EU presidency has called for the establishment of an international tribunal for war crimes after new mass graves were found in Ukraine.

“In the 21st century, such ­attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent,” said Jan Lipavsky, Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

“We must not overlook it. We stand for the punishment of all war criminals,” he tweeted late on Saturday. “I call for the speedy ­establishment of a special international tribunal that will prosecute the crime of aggression.”

The appeal follows the discovery by Ukrainian authorities last week of about 450 graves outside the formerly Russian-occupied city of Izyum, with some of the exhumed bodies showing signs of torture.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, in his evening address, said “new evidence of torture was obtained” from the bodies buried there.

“More than 10 torture chambers have already been found in various cities and towns liberated in Kharkiv region,” he added, ­describing the discovery of electrical implements for torture.

“That’s what the Nazis did. This is what Ruscists do. And they will be held accountable in the same way – both on the battlefield and in courtrooms.”

Oleg Synegubov, head of the Kharkiv regional administration, said among the bodies exhumed on Saturday, 99 per cent showed “signs of violent death”.

“There are several bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, and one person is buried with a rope around his neck,” he said on social media.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the mass graves likely provided more evidence that Russia was committing war crimes in its pro-Western neighbour. French President Emmanuel Macron described what had happened in Izyum as atrocities.

The Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said there were “probably more than 1000 Ukrainian citizens tortured and killed in the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region”.

The mass burial site outside the newly liberated city of Izyum. Picture: AFP

The UN in Geneva has said it hoped to send a team to determine the circumstances of the deaths. The macabre discoveries came a little more than five months after the Russian army, driven out of Bucha near the capital, Kyiv, left behind hundreds of corpses of civilians, many of whom had signs of torture and summary executions.

On Thursday, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin to face the International Criminal Court over war crimes in Ukraine.

In Washington, US President Joe Biden warned Mr Putin against using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons in the wake of serious losses in his war in Ukraine.

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t,” Mr Biden said, in an excerpt from an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, aired on Saturday. “You would change the face of war unlike anything since World War II.”

On the ground, Ukrainian forces have recaptured thousands of square kilometres in recent weeks thanks to a counter-offensive in the northeast and now threaten enemy positions in the south of the country, as the fighting and bombings continue.

The Russians “are angry ­because our army is pushing them back in its counter-offensive”, said Svitlana Shpuk, a 42-year-old worker in Kryvyi Rih, a southern town, and Mr Zelensky’s home town, which was flooded after a dam was destroyed by Russian missiles.

Pavlo Kyrylenko, Governor of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, which has been partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014, said on social media that a thermal power plant was “shelled by Russian invaders” on Saturday in Mykolaivka.

Ukrainian firefighters were battling the blaze, he said, adding that the Russian shelling had led to interruptions to drinking water supply. “The occupiers are deliberately targeting infrastructure in the area to try to inflict as much damage as possible, primarily on the civilian population,” he said.

In its daily briefing in Moscow, the Kremlin said it had carried out “high-precision” strikes against Ukrainian positions in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions.

In the northeastern town of Kupiansk, which was recaptured last week by Ukrainian forces, clashes continued with the Russian army entrenched on the eastern side of the Oskil river.

AFP