odanny
Diamond Member
Everywhere these animals retreat, evidence of war crimes greets Ukrainians.
Like nearly all the Ukrainian-held towns and villages near Kherson, Pravdyne — prewar population 1,222, according to the village head — has no power or running water. It has become a desolate scene of leafless trees, deserted homes and long, muddy roads.
A small convoy of war crimes investigators traveled down one of those roads on Monday, after hearing about the deaths of several security guards who came from out of town and worked for an agricultural company, living in a pale blue house.
According to the villagers, one guard, a friendly man named Vlad, had struck up a relationship with a teenage girl who had been badly abused by her stepfather. The stepfather was worried that he might get in trouble, the villagers said, so he started collaborating with the Russians and made up a story that Vlad and the other security guards were spying on the Russians.
One morning in mid-April, Anatoliy Sikoza, a neighbor, heard an explosion at the house. When he ran over, he found it destroyed. Sprawled on the ground, half-buried in the rubble, lay the bodies of six of the seven security guards and the teenage girl. Mr. Sikoza said he’s a hunter and knows a thing or two about death.
“And I could tell it wasn’t the explosion that killed them,” he said.
He stepped closer. He saw that several of the men had their hands tied behind their backs and that their eyes were blindfolded. The girl, he said, looked as if she had been strangled.
Such discoveries have been a recurring horror in Ukraine. In April, after the Russians withdrew from the suburbs of Kyiv, the authorities found hundreds of bodies of civilians, particularly in the town of Bucha, and residents said Russian soldiers had executed many of them, most often for no reason.
To the east, there were similar finds in Izium in September and Lyman in October after the Russians retreated from a Ukrainian offensive.
www.nytimes.com
Like nearly all the Ukrainian-held towns and villages near Kherson, Pravdyne — prewar population 1,222, according to the village head — has no power or running water. It has become a desolate scene of leafless trees, deserted homes and long, muddy roads.
A small convoy of war crimes investigators traveled down one of those roads on Monday, after hearing about the deaths of several security guards who came from out of town and worked for an agricultural company, living in a pale blue house.
According to the villagers, one guard, a friendly man named Vlad, had struck up a relationship with a teenage girl who had been badly abused by her stepfather. The stepfather was worried that he might get in trouble, the villagers said, so he started collaborating with the Russians and made up a story that Vlad and the other security guards were spying on the Russians.
One morning in mid-April, Anatoliy Sikoza, a neighbor, heard an explosion at the house. When he ran over, he found it destroyed. Sprawled on the ground, half-buried in the rubble, lay the bodies of six of the seven security guards and the teenage girl. Mr. Sikoza said he’s a hunter and knows a thing or two about death.
“And I could tell it wasn’t the explosion that killed them,” he said.
He stepped closer. He saw that several of the men had their hands tied behind their backs and that their eyes were blindfolded. The girl, he said, looked as if she had been strangled.
Such discoveries have been a recurring horror in Ukraine. In April, after the Russians withdrew from the suburbs of Kyiv, the authorities found hundreds of bodies of civilians, particularly in the town of Bucha, and residents said Russian soldiers had executed many of them, most often for no reason.
To the east, there were similar finds in Izium in September and Lyman in October after the Russians retreated from a Ukrainian offensive.
Russian Retreat Reveals Signs of an Atrocity in a Ukrainian Village (Published 2022)
In the southern Kherson region, the pattern seen in eastern Ukraine is repeating: The withdrawal of Russian forces yields evidence of possible war crimes.
