'INHUMANE'
Inside liberated Ukrainian town where cowardly Russians slaughtered 436 innocents then ‘ran away like little b*****s’
IN a now-tranquil pine forest, the numbers etched on to the little wooden crosses run into the hundreds.
Before the Russians came, locals in Izyum, in north east Ukraine, would meet near here to sip beer and stoke barbecues.
9
9
9
Now it is the acrid stench of death that is everywhere. For this grisly mass burial site gave up 436 bodies last week, with Ukrainian officials suspecting some victims were tortured and murdered.
In Izyum’s war-ravaged centre, social worker Tetyana Sterkhova, 60, says of the occupiers: “They were like animals, nothing like human beings.”
Some of the dead — mostly civilians — had bound hands or ropes around their necks, gunshot wounds and broken limbs, according to Ukrainian officials.
Several others found in the sandy soil of the makeshift cemetery on the outskirts of Izyum “had their genitals amputated”, said regional governor Oleh Synyehubov.
READ MORE ON THE UKRAINE WAR
He added: “All this is evidence of the terrible torture to which the occupiers subjected the residents of Izyum.”
After a lightning counter-offensive, Izyum and a swathe of territory the size of Lancashire was liberated by Ukrainian forces last month.
Ripped apart
Forgetting herself for a moment, Tetyana tells me with fire in her eyes: “The Russians are cowards, they ran like little bitches.”
Apologising for her language, she added of the occupiers: “I have my human dignity, I told them not to point a gun at me. The Russians didn’t scare me.”
Most read in The Sun
A formidable woman, she epitomises her nation’s fighting spirit that has seen Ukraine beat back a Russian army which was supposed to be one of the most powerful in the world.
On September 5, Ukrainian forces swept east in a swift and deftly planned attack that soon turned a Russian retreat into a rout.
Amid the onslaught, 100 Russian tanks were captured or wrecked, while enemy munitions and sensitive technology also fell into Ukrainian hands.
Locals like to joke that Russia is now their biggest supplier of military aid.
Russia’s elite 4th Guards Tank Division was ripped apart as the Ukrainians swept across the rolling plains of Kharkiv Oblast.
Special forces officer Denys Yaroslavskiy said his men didn’t sleep for three days, adding: “We fed on adrenalin, excitement and anticipation. None of us expected it to move so fast.”
The battlefield reverses led to Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday announcing the annex- ation of four Ukrainian regions following sham referendums.
The land grab of Russian-occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia represents about 15 per cent of Ukraine. The Russian government says the regions will now fall under Moscow’s nuclear umbrella. And Putin threatens to use nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory.
Sun photographer Chris Eades and I this week traced the thrust of Ukraine’s devastating counter-attack through maize fields and rolling sunflower-strewn meadows.
We passed bombed-out industrial-sized grain silos, evidence of how the global food market has been pummelled.
Stolen civilian cars — daubed with the letter Z, the symbol of Russia’s bloodthirsty invasion — lie smashed on the outskirts to settlements. Locals chopped wood and cooked borsch soup outside on open fires, as gas and electricity remaining cut off.
Devastation is everywhere. Bridges are blown, homes wrecked and petrol stations obliterated, while Tarmac roads have become rutted by tank tracks.
Russians went on a mass looting spree in the occupied lands. Postal workers returned to find even their toilet had even been ripped out and stolen.
It wasn’t just Ukrainian guile and guts that won the day on these windswept plains. British and other Western military support has helped turn the tide, especially the US-donated M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as Himars. The high-precision launch- ers — with a range of 50 miles — have outgunned the Russians, who relied on heavy artillery to push further into the Donbass region earlier this year.
Driving through heavily armed checkpoints and passing bombed-out tanks, we reached war-ravaged Izyum, nearly 77 miles south east of Kharkiv.
In March, Russia flattened swathes of the city with indiscriminate artillery shelling and air strikes. Dozens of the 50,000 civilians were killed — many corpses left on the street or buried in backyards and parks.
Ukrainian forces blew the city’s road bridges over the Donets River in an attempt to stem the advance but confirmed Russians had seized Izyum on April 1.
We met Tetyana at the remains of Izyum’s central hospital, which had been reduced to rubble. The mum of two added: “This was a city of strawberry and mushroom growers before the Russians came.
“The bombing was indiscriminate. Many people decided to leave for safety but I stayed behind to care for my sick 83-year-old mother.”
In his office — with blown-out windows — local council deputy Konstantyn Petrov told me how he had to flee in March.
The 39-year-old explained: “I was told by our military to get out. The Russians want to take hostage or kill people like me.
“If you stayed behind, people in my position had two options, either cooperate with the Russians or don’t cooperate and be killed.”
Describing the pitiless occupation, he added: “It was an awful life for the 18,000 people who stayed.
“There was no electricity, no gas and almost no food. And the Russians subjected people to constant propaganda.
“There were Russian flags in the streets and billboards reading ‘Ukraine and Russia are one nation’. People were threatened, imprisoned and tortured. Then came the mass burials.
“There are lots of bodies and pieces of bodies. DNA analysis is taking place to identify them.”
9
9
9
Standing amid the rubble of his flattened car repair warehouse, a forlorn Leonid Schhybria, 73, tells how he was imprisoned and interrogated for five days.
Russian commanders blamed him for leaking the coordinates of his workshop, where 15 tanks were hidden. The businessman and local historian told me: “I was thrown into a dark basement and interro- gated.
“I was given bad soup which made me feel sick when I smelt it. When they released me I had lost 4kg (9lb).”
Leonid also had his cars stolen and his home looted for jewellery, rare books and a medal he was awarded during Soviet times. One of his cars, a silver Opel Combo, has been returned by local officials — with a giant Z painted on its bonnet by the Russians.
The dad of two says he witnessed bodies being pushed on hospital trolleys across a footbridge over the Donets River beneath a fluttering Russian flag.
The pensioner added: “There was a big smell of death. Now I associate the Russian flag with the stench of dead bodies.”
Some parents in the city, mindful of the awful conditions, responded to occupation radio and newspaper ads promoting a free summer camp break in Russia.
Children left on a bus convoy from Izyum at the end of August with the promise that they would be home for the start of the school year.
Then Ukraine’s swift onslaught liberated the town, leaving 52 kids aged nine to 16 from Izyum, and around 250 more from other towns in the Kharkiv region, marooned in Russia.
One Izyum mum took matters into her own hands, hitchhiking through a war zone to retrieve her daughter.
She travelled through Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory to Crimea and on to the Russian Black Sea resort of Gelendzhik, where many of the children remain.
But authorities at the camp told her: “We will not allow you to take your child to Ukraine.”
The mum signed a document promising to stay in Russia — then whisked her daughter home by the same perilous route.
Russian soldiers manning a checkpoint told her: “We will burn your country to ash.”
A couple from Izyum who organised the trip — and have remained in Russia — say it is too dangerous for the children to return.
Worried that they may be seen as collaborators who sent their children to holiday with the enemy, most of the parents are unwilling to be named.
One dad, whose nine-year-old remains in Russia, said: “We are simple people. We could never afford a seaside holiday for our children and we saw this as a chance.”
As the sun dipped low in the skies, sending rays of bright light through the pine forest, a pensioner gathered logs close to the mass grave site.
The sandy woodland was also a Russian military emplacement, evidenced by wood-beamed trenches.
With moist eyes, Victor Troyan, 67, gestured towards the grave pits and said: “We have no other option but to win this war. During the occupation lots of people lost their minds and committed suicide. They couldn’t see any way out.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Read More on The Sun
“I stayed in Izyum because it’s our land. Why should I leave?
“Now I believe Putin’s days are numbered.”
9
9
9
Topics