After Russians kicked out, Ukrainians search cemeteries for relatives

Clutching a neatly written list of names and numbers, resident Volodymyr Kolesnik searched the graves for relatives he said were killed in an airstrike on his apartment just before Izium fell to Russian forces in April. I walked between

Kolesnik said he knew that his relatives had been taken to the burial site and were in several numbered graves.

He stopped in front of the number 199 cross, checked the list given to him by the local funeral home that dug the grave, and then carefully held up a small sign bearing the name of his cousin Yury Yakovenko. .

Cross number 164, he said, was his cousin’s wife. and 174, his cousin’s mother, Kolesnik’s aunt.

“They put the corpse in a bag and buried it without a coffin or anything. I was not allowed to come here at first. I was scared because there were so many dead bodies in the forest.’I want you to come here,’ Kolesnik told Reuters.

Moscow denies atrocities

Moscow has not commented on the discovery of the tomb. It regularly denies committing atrocities in war or targeting civilians.

The head of the pro-Russian regime, which abandoned the area earlier this month, has accused Ukrainians of committing atrocities in the city of Izium. “I haven’t heard anything about the burial,” Vitaly Ganchev told state television Russia 24.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not responded to the accusations, but has dismissed Ukraine’s swift counterattack, arguing that the Russian aggression is a necessary step to thwart a Western plot to divide Russia. did.

“Kyiv authorities have announced that they have launched and are conducting an aggressive counteroffensive operation,” Putin said Friday after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. “Well, let’s see how it develops and how it ends,” he said with a grin.

Putin has warned that Moscow will respond more forcefully if its military is put under more pressure, and may one day use unconventional means such as small nuclear and chemical weapons. causing concern.