Advancing Ukraine soldiers uncover new torture chamber as Putin’s thugs are accused of fresh war crimes
- New torture chamber uncovered as Russians retreat from the west of Ukraine
- Is latest evidence Putin’s thugs may be responsible for war crimes in the country
- War crimes investigators found three skeletons with skull fractures in Kherson
- A makeshift prison used to torture Ukrainian dissidents was on fire last night
- Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said more horrors were likely to be uncovered
Ukrainian soldiers uncovered a torture chamber after they liberated Mykolaiv and Kherson from Russian troops on Friday.
It is the latest evidence to suggest Putin‘s thugs are responsible for war crimes during Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
A makeshift Russian prison used to torture and interrogate Ukrainian dissidents was filmed on fire in Kherson last night after the area was liberated by President Zelensky‘s troops.
Investigators also uncovered three skeletons with fractured skulls in a cellar in the town of Berislav, Kherson.
Ukraine’s office for the Prosecutor General said the bodies were of three civilians who were living in the Kherson region and died during the Russian occupation.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned that while many were celebrating as Putin’s forces were beaten back from the region, the war was not over and Ukrainian troops would likely uncover more horrors.
A torture chamber was uncovered by advancing Ukrainian troops in Mykolaiv, which borders the Kherson region
War crimes investigators also found three skeletons with skull fractures in a cellar in Kherson
He said: ‘We are winning battles on the ground, but the war continues.
‘Every time we liberate a piece of our territory from Russian army we find torture rooms and mass graves with civilians tortured and murdered by Russian army.’
He added: ‘It’s not easy to speak with people like this. But I said that every war ends with diplomacy and Russia has to approach talks in good faith.’
Investigations by the US this week showed Russia’s war in Ukraine may already have killed or wounded tens of thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
A team from the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine has already investigated alleged war crimes in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy, finding evidence of sexual abuse, executions, bombing of civilian areas and torture.
Children as young as four have been raped and tortured by Putin‘s thugs in Ukraine, the UN experts claimed.
Last night a blaze raged at a makeshift Russian prison used to detain and torture Ukrainian dissidents
The detention centre was abandoned when Russian troops fled Kherson in a humiliating setback for Vladimir Putin
They cited testimonies by former detainees of beatings, electric shocks and forced nudity in Russian detention facilities.
An unspecified number of Russian soldiers were found to have committed crimes of sexual or gender-based violence – with victims ranging in age from four to 82 years old, Erik Mose, the commission’s chairman, told the Human Rights Council.
He said the team was ‘struck by the large number of executions in the areas that we visited’, and the frequent ‘visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats’.
He said: ‘Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine.’
Investigators carry a body bag past multiple corpses on the forest floor, near Izyum, eastern Ukraine,on September 23
A worker carries a cross during a burial ceremony for unidentified persons killed in the Bucha district
A visibly emotional President Volodymyr Zelensky stood motionless as he surveyed the scene of utter devastation he encountered in the town of Bucha on April 4, with dozens of bodies shot at close range laying on the empty streets
Dead bodies litter the streets of Bucha, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, after Russian forces withdrew from the region
A van with ‘children’ written on it – intended as a warning to Russian troops – is seen riddled with bullet holes in Bucha
Russian forces, which occupied areas to the west of Kyiv since the early days of the war, withdrew at the weekend
In September Ukrainian officials said 436 bodies were exhumed from a mass burial site in Izium, 30 of them with visible signs of torture.
The governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleh Synyehubov, and the region’s police chief, Volodymyr Tymoshko, said three more grave sites have been located in areas retaken by Ukrainian forces in a counteroffensive this month
During their 10-day June trip to Ukraine, the UN team visited Bucha, a city outside Kyiv where Ukrainian authorities found mass graves and bodies strewn in the streets after Russian forces pulled out in late March.
The findings echo reports of the destruction, death and despair in Ukraine since Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion on February 24.