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Ukraine’s President says evidence of atrocities found in mass graves near Izyum

President Zelensky
Photo: EPA/BGNES

In the mass graves discovered near the city of Izyum, which has been liberated from Russian occupation, evidence of atrocities were found, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. In a video on the subject, he said that hundreds of bodies of people who were tortured, shot and killed in shelling, were discovered. He described a case of a body with broken arms and a rope around the neck. President Zelensky also says that the graves are more than 400 and the number of victims is still unknown.

Meanwhile, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell and French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the atrocities in Izyum and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that what had been done was appalling and that Russia was probably responsible for war crimes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to continue the offensive in Ukraine despite the Ukrainian counter-offensive. He warned that Moscow could intensify its strikes if Ukrainian forces targeted power plants or other infrastructure sites in Russia. At a press conference in Samarkand, Putin said that “liberating” the entire territory of eastern Ukraine's Donbas region remained a primary military objective and that he saw no need to revise it, the Associated Press reported.

Sergei Gorenko, chief prosecutor of the Russian-backed separatist Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, and his deputy Ekaterina Steglenko were killed in an explosion at the prosecutor's office, AFP reported. There are reports that a man and a woman who organized a referendum in the southern city of Berdyansk on joining Russia, also died. In recent months, dozens of separatist representatives and employees of the Russian administration in the Moscow-occupied Ukrainian territories have been the target of attacks and many of them lost their lives.




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