(Kyiv) The Czech presidency of the EU on Saturday called for the creation of an international tribunal for war crimes, after the discovery of hundreds of bodies near Izium, a city recaptured from the Russians in Ukraine.
Posted at 11:12 a.m.
“In the 21ste century, such attacks on the civilian population are unthinkable and heinous,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, said on Twitter on Saturday.
“We must not ignore it. We are for the punishment of all war criminals”, he added, “I call for the rapid creation of a special international tribunal”.
Ukrainian authorities reported on Friday “450 bodies of civilians bearing signs of violent death and torture” buried in a wood on the outskirts of Izium.
“There are several bodies with their hands tied behind their backs and one person is buried with a rope around their neck. Obviously, these people were tortured and executed,” regional governor Oleg Synegoubov said on Telegram.
PHOTO GLEB GARANICH, REUTERS
Members of the Ukrainian emergency services transport the bodies exhumed from the mass grave.
On the same site, an AFP journalist was able to see at least one body with its hands tied with a rope.
According to Ukrainian human rights official Dmytro Loubinets, there were “probably more than 1,000 Ukrainian citizens tortured and killed in the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region”. As for the head of the Ukrainian police, Igor Klymenko, he announced the discovery of 10 “torture rooms” in localities taken back from the Russians in the Kharkiv region, including six in Izium.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced in a video posted Friday on Telegram the crimes of a Russian army composed of “murderers” and “torturers”, and promised them a “terribly just punishment”.
The announcement of this macabre discovery raised a new wave of indignation in the West, a little more than five months after the Russian army, driven out of the vicinity of Kyiv, left behind hundreds of corpses of civilians, many of which bore traces of torture and summary executions, particularly in the locality of Boutcha.
“The world must react”
“The world has to react to all this. Russia repeated to Izioum what it had done to Boutcha,” Zelensky said in a video message on Friday evening, welcoming the UN’s announcement that it was sending a team to the scene to join the Ukrainian investigation.
PHOTO SERGEI SUPINSKY, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
The United States and the European Union have expressed outrage, holding the Russian leadership responsible.
“Russia, its leaders and all those implicated in the continued violations of international law and international humanitarian law in Ukraine will be held to account,” European Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said in a statement on Friday.
Thursday, even before the discovery of the graves and mass graves of Izioum, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen had wanted the appearance of Russian President Vladimir Putin before international justice for war crimes.
US President Joe Biden for his part once again warned his Russian counterpart against the use of chemical or nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Biden warning
“It would change the course of the war, as never since the Second World War,” warned Friday evening the American leader during an interview with CBS.
PHOTO EVELYN HOCKSTEIN, REUTERS
US President Joe Biden
“Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it,” Biden urged, promising a “substantial” response from the United States if this step were to be taken.
On the ground, where the Ukrainian forces armed by the West, after having contained the Russian advance in the east of the country, have taken back thousands of square kilometers thanks to a counter-offensive in the northeast, fighting and shelling continues.
The Russians “got angry because our army pushed them back in their counter-offensive,” said Svitlana Chpouk, a 42-year-old worker in Kryvyi Rig, a southern town threatened by Russian fire on a hydraulic reservoir, upstream, on the Ingulets River.
In the Kharkiv region, an 11-year-old girl was killed by Russian missile fire on the town of Chuiguiv, Governor Oleg Synegoubov said.
Plant bombed
A thermal power plant was “bombarded by Russian invaders” on Saturday morning in Mykolaivka, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region (east) on Telegram, indicating that Ukrainian firefighters were fighting the fire there and that the bombardment had resulted in cuts in drinking water.
“The occupiers are deliberately targeting infrastructure in the area to try to inflict as much damage as possible, first and foremost on the civilian population,” he charged.
He had previously reported 2 civilians killed and 11 injured in the past 24 hours by Russian fire.
In the neighboring region of Dnipropetrovsk, “the Russians fired all night on the district of Nikopol with Grad (multiple rocket launchers, editor’s note) and heavy artillery”, affirmed the local governor Valentin Reznitchenko, indicating that there were no casualties but significant material damage.
According to the head of the local assembly, Mykola Loukachouk, however, Russian fire has killed two people and injured three in the last 24 hours.
In the south, “one person died in Dmitrivka after enemy shelling,” said the governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitali Kim.
The Russian army, which denies targeting civilian infrastructure or residential areas, claims from Moscow that it carried out “high precision” strikes against Ukrainian positions in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions.
In Kyiv, on Saturday, hundreds of Ukrainians took part in the Kyiv National Opera in a farewell ceremony for the former solo dancer then pedagogue Oleksandr Chapoval, killed on September 12 at the age of 47 in the east of the country while he enlisted to fight the Russians.