Four bodies of civilians killed have been found with “traces of torture” in the village of Zaliznychné, in the Kharkiv region, recently taken over by Kyiv from Russian forces, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office announced on Monday.
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According to him, the four corpses were found on Sunday and “carried signs of torture”. “Three of them were buried on the territory of family properties, another was buried on the territory of the asphalt factory opposite the railway station,” he said on Facebook.
“According to the preliminary version of the investigation, the victims were killed by the Russian soldiers during the occupation of the village,” continued the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.
According to him, it was the inhabitants who “contacted the police and reported that Russian soldiers had killed their fellow citizens” after the passage of this village under Ukrainian control last week.
The NGO Amnesty International for its part called on Monday the Ukrainian authorities to “give priority to the collection of evidence” of alleged war crimes in the territories recently retaken from Russian forces.
“Collecting such evidence is extremely resource-intensive, and we therefore call on the international community to provide resources that will support Ukraine’s efforts,” the organization said in a statement.
Ukraine announced in recent days significant territorial gains in the Kharkiv region, bordering Russia in the northeast of the country, which had been partially under Russian occupation since the start of the war.
In another village in the region, in Grakové, where AFP journalists observed destruction testifying to the violence of the fighting, the prosecutor’s office had also indicated that it had discovered the bodies of two civilians, with traces of torture and impacts bullet to the back of the head.
Russian forces have been accused of multiple abuses during their occupation of Kyiv suburbs, including Boutcha, from where they withdrew at the end of March.
Moscow has for its part denied any crime and assured that it is about falsifications.