Among the tortured victims recovered from a mass burial site in Izyum were Ukrainians who had their genitals hacked off by barbaric Russian troops, it has emerged.
Ukraine ’s Ministry of Internal Affairs said the majority of the 440 victims discovered in makeshift graves after the liberation of Kharkiv last week were found with horrific signs of trauma and abuse.
First Deputy Minister Yevheny Yenin said investigators found men with bound hands and “severed genitalia” after 146 corpses were unearthed from a single site on Monday.
He added: “We continue to find bodies with signs of violent death - there are many of them.
“These include broken ribs and cracked skulls, men with bound hands, broken jaws, and severed genitalia.”
The full extent of the horrors of Russian occupation have been revealed in the days after thousands of Vladimir Putin's troops retreated from the Kharkiv region after Ukraine's lightning counteroffensive.
At the local police station, investigators discovered makeshift electric chairs and other instruments of cruelty suggesting the site was turned into a torture centre where Ukrainians were interrogated and abused.
A series of chilling images show dining room chairs rigged up to the mains with a crude wooden platform and a metal pole holding it all in place.
The wooden stand was in place so interrogators could avoid electrocution while threatening their victims.
Images of the torture device were shared by Taras Berezovets, a member of Ukraine's special forces.
He said the enemy “used electric shocks to torture prisoners of war and civilians”.
“The wires with which the prisoners were interrogated are visible on the left in the wall,” he added.
Kharkiv Governor Oleg Synehubov wrote on Telegram that two of the bodies recovered were children.
He said: “Some of the dead have signs of a violent death. There are bodies with tied hands and traces of torture. The deceased were also found to have explosive, shrapnel and stab wounds.”
Izyum’s police chief Sergey Bolvinov shared images and clips of the eerie cells on social media.
The alleged Russian war criminals kept meticulous records of the site, jotting down a list of those detained and “instruments of torture”.
He added: “People were kept in dark basement cells from several weeks to months, not even always understanding what exactly the occupiers wanted from them.”
The vast majority of the bodies found in the mass grave site were civilians, Bolvinov adds.
The police station chamber was just one of 10 similar facilities found in the recently liberated area.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “More than 10 torture chambers have already been found in the Kharkiv region, in cities and towns.
“Torture was a widespread practice in the occupied territories.
“That’s what the Nazis did – this is what the Russians do. They will answer in the same way – both on the battlefield and in courtrooms.”
The European Union presidency, currently held by the Czech Republic, called yesterday for an international tribunal over Russia ’s invasion.
“We stand for the punishment of all war criminals,” Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said. “In the 21st Century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent.
“We must not overlook it. We stand for the punishment of all war criminals.”
At the mass grave near Izyum, Volodymyr Kolesnyk searched for remains of loved ones killed in an airstrike on an apartment block in April.
He paused before a cross marked number 199 after checking the list a local funeral firm gave him.
A small sign on it had the name Yurii Yakovenko – his cousin. Cross number 164 was his cousin’s wife. At 174 lay his cousin’s mother.
