More than 60 bodies bearing signs of torture have been found in the southern Kherson region following the retreat of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, government officials said.
Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs Denis Monastyrsky said law enforcement agencies have so far discovered the bodies of 63 people showing signs of torture, and that they are now being examined by investigators.
"We must understand that the search has only just started, so many more dungeons and burial places will be uncovered," he was cited as saying on national television by the Interfax Ukraine news agency.
Ukraine has so far logged 436 war crimes in the region that took place under Russian occupation, according to the minister.
The Kherson region was seized by Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces in March, just days after the war began. Russia announced its withdrawal from the key city of the same name earlier this month amid the Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Sergey Surovikin, who became the new head of Russia's forces in Ukraine in October, said on November 10 that his troops would be retreating to "preserve the lives of our soldiers and the combat capability of the troop group."
Monastyrsky also said investigators had uncovered at least 11 places of detention in liberated areas, and that torture was carried out in at least four of these places.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Kherson city on November 14, where he said "the Russian army left behind the same atrocities as in other regions of the country where it was able to go."
The press service of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on Thursday that its employees and the national police had discovered a "torture chamber" where Russian occupiers interrogated and tortured pro-Ukrainian Kherson residents.
According to the SBU, local residents were "brutally tortured" for refusing to cooperate with Russians and kept in "inhumane conditions."
Law enforcement officers found objects that "directly indicate signs of torture" during an inspection, the SBU said.
"Currently, investigative and operational measures are being carried out to document all the crimes of the occupiers, identify the culprits and bring them to justice," the SBU said in a statement.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), a U.S.-based human rights group, previously documented how occupying Russian forces tortured and unlawfully detained civilians in the occupied areas of Kherson.
"The Russian military is spreading fear and lawlessness in the occupied areas in southern Ukraine," Yulia Gorbunova, a senior Ukraine researcher at HRW said in July. "We have documented a number of episodes that bear the hallmarks of war crimes: torture, ill-treatment, arbitrary detention and illegal detention of civilians."
Russia has denied intentionally targeting civilians.
Newsweek has contacted Russia's foreign ministry for comment.
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About the writer
Isabel van Brugen is a Newsweek Reporter based in Kuala Lumpur. Her focus is reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Isabel ... Read more
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