Images and information of a Russian “torture chamber” that Ukrainian war crimes investigators discovered in a recently freed hamlet have been made public.
Officials said that Russian soldiers tortured military and civilian inmates in the depressing basement of Kozacha Lopan in the Kharkiv area of Ukraine.
One picture included a military phone from the Soviet period, which they said served as the power source for a yellow line that was attached to metal clips and used to electrocute detainees while they were being questioned.
There was another chamber in the basement with bars as in a jail.
Testimonies from Ukrainians claiming they were electrocuted, burnt, and assaulted by Russian forces after they demanded the identities and addresses of important military personnel in the area have surfaced in recent days.
Prosecutors have documented the atrocities, which included torture chambers as well as mass graves. They have so far exhumed more than 60 bodies – of both soldiers and civilians – from a burial site thought to contain at least 450 graves in a forest on the edge of Izyum in Kharkiv
The Kremlin troops who were occupying Kharkiv, in the north-east of the country, have dropped their weapons and fled in the last couple of weeks after Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
The attack has rapidly retaken over 3,000 square miles of territory that was lost to Vladimir Putin’s forces earlier this year.
But the Ukrainian soldiers’ joy quickly turned to grief as they uncovered evidence of Russian war crimes. Prosecutors have documented the atrocities, which included torture chambers as well as mass graves.
They have so far exhumed more than 60 bodies – of both soldiers and civilians – from a burial site thought to contain at least 450 graves in a forest on the edge of Izyum in Kharkiv.
Some bodies showed signs of torture, with their hands tied behind their backs and ropes around their necks, it was claimed. Others revealed injuries consistent with rocket or shelling attacks.
The EU has called for an international war crimes tribunal to be set up to probe Russia’s actions during its seven-month invasion. Following its hasty retreat on the battlefield, Russia has escalated its shelling of Ukrainian towns and cities from within its own borders
President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of genocide in his TV address on Saturday and said it will answer for its crimes ‘both on the battlefield and in the courtroom’.
He added: ‘More than ten torture chambers have already been found in the liberated areas in Kharkiv.’
And a resident of nearby Kupyansk gave a horrifying account of the torture methods allegedly used on him. He said he was electrocuted for 40 minutes, adding: ‘They shot me either with a pneumatic gun or a gas gun, I don’t know – I was in a bag. [People] were beaten with bats or iron pipes.’
The EU has called for an international war crimes tribunal to be set up to probe Russia’s actions during its seven-month invasion. Following its hasty retreat on the battlefield, Russia has escalated its shelling of Ukrainian towns and cities from within its own borders.
Several deaths, including those of four doctors and a nine-year-old girl, were reported in the Kharkiv region. The UK’s Ministry of Defence yesterday said Russia was ‘prepared to strike in an attempt to undermine the morale of the Ukrainian people and government’.
One image showed a Soviet-era military telephone which they claimed was used as the power source for a yellow wire which was connected to metal clips to electrocute prisoners during interrogation.