The sights, the sounds and the smells were almost unbearable.
Twisted decomposing bodies were being exhumed from the sandy soil of a pine forest outside of Izium, Ukraine, as war crimes were uncovered one grave at a time.
Dozens of workers, shovels in hand, dug for weeks on end.
It was grim and gruelling work, and they carried it out with diligence, care and respect.
The sound of those long-handled shovels, digging, ploughing, gripping and shifting the sand around the bodies of Izium’s dead, will forever stay with those present.
On a nearby pathway, relatives of the tortured, murdered and other victims of war crimes waited for their loved ones to be identified.
With haunted looks in their eyes, they stood behind the police tape — as close as they could get to the burial site and to any news of what may have happened to their children, their husbands, their wives.
Some wore masks or held handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths to try to ward off the stench coming from the rotting bodies being brought to the surface.
This grisly scene was underway in September last year, after Izium, in the country’s east and less than 200 kilometres from the Russian border, had been liberated by Ukrainian forces.
Six months earlier, Vladimir Putin had told the people here that his troops were coming to save them from what he called a government of “drug addicts and neo-Nazis”.
When Ukraine recaptures its territory, initially there is joy, and then despair follows as the evidence of atrocities emerges.
In this pine forest on Izium’s outskirts, people watched as the disfigured bodies of their relatives and neighbours, killed and tortured by the Russian president’s troops, were dug up.
Across three days in September last year, the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent team documented the site as prosecutors patiently and methodically gathered evidence of war crimes.
Now, a year after the graves were first discovered, investigators are continuing the slow process of accumulating evidence, finding the perpetrators, and pursuing justice for those killed during the Russian occupation.
New intelligence released this week by the Centre for Information Resilience — a not-for-profit human rights group — has also shed more light on the war crimes in Izium, including identifying key locations where torture took place and which units could have been involved.
‘Rope around neck, hands tied’
Colonel Serhii Bolvinov dreams of coming to Australia and diving into the ocean. But for now, he’s not going anywhere.
The chief investigator with the Kharkiv National Police is busy leading the probe into what he describes as “a large number of war crimes cases in Izium”.
Colonel Bolvinov says his team is looking into crimes including murders, air strikes on the civilian population, “collaborative activities” and torture.
He says the investigative process involving the bodies discovered at the mass burial site has been exhaustive, and that 451 corpses were removed from the forest.
“There were 105 inspections of the scene, 451 additional inspections of corpses in the morgue were conducted,” he says.
Of that number, only 24 were from the military. The rest were civilians.
Many died as a result of air strikes.
Ukrainian authorities say at least 54 people were killed when a bomb was dropped on an apartment block in Pershotravneva Street on March 9, 2022.
The ABC was one of the first international news outlets permitted to access the Izium police station — a building used as a torture chamber during Russia’s occupation.
It was in the cramped, dark cells in the basement that local citizens were detained and tortured.
As Colonel Bolvinov’s team bagged and removed equipment used to torture civilians, including electric cables, the police chief could not hide his disgust.
“I’m from Kharkiv. This is my land,” he said at the time.
“When we see places like this, we’re filled with hatred.”
This was just one of 27 sites in the Kharkiv region local police identified as being converted into torture chambers during the occupation.
Twelve months on, there is evidence that some of those people buried in the pine forest were tortured.
“Signs of torture were found in at least 15 people, with rope around the neck, hands tied behind the back, polymer cuffs on the wrists, bullet wounds in the knee joints and multiple traumatic rib fractures,” Colonel Bolvinov says.
The local police are up against it when it comes to getting justice for the victims.
Many witnesses fled the area due to the war and evidence was lost during the occupation.
Alleged perpetrators from the Russian army have left and are outside the jurisdiction of Kharkiv’s criminal justice system.
And there are other factors that make the police’s ongoing work difficult.
“A large part of the territory is still mined and dangerous for investigators,” Colonel Bolvinov says.
“Territories close to the combat zone are still under fire from the Russian army.”
But hope remains that one day justice will come.
The police are continuing their investigations and are optimistic several cases will soon be in court.
Poet abducted and killed during occupation
In November, investigators established that one of the exhumed bodies belonged to the poet and children’s author Volodymyr Vakulenko.
The 49-year-old had been abducted in March last year after Russian troops occupied the village of Kapytolivka.
He was snatched from his home by armed soldiers and taken away in a van with the letter Z on it.
When the author’s body was identified, authorities found it had been mutilated and contained two bullets fired from an old-style Soviet semi-automatic pistol, known as a Makarov.
Colonel Bolvinov’s team opened a murder investigation.
Vakulenko loved his homeland. He was wounded during the Euromaidan protests of 2014, wore his patriotic tattoos with pride and had a “Putin is a Dickhead” ringtone on his mobile phone.
As a writer and activist with pro-Ukrainian views, he was a target for the Russian invaders and militia.
Fearing that he would soon be killed, he buried his diary in his backyard.
When the ABC was in Izium last year, Vakulenko was still missing.
While filming at the Museum of Ukrainian Literature, the novelist and non-fiction writer Victoria Amelina turned up with Vakulenko’s diary, wanting to donate it to the museum’s collection.
“He realised he would be arrested so he took his occupation diary and hid it under a cherry tree in his garden,” she told the ABC at the time.
Amelina had trained with the not-for-profit organisation Truth Hounds to become a war crimes investigator.
She had gotten used to taking witness statements, but a shovel was all she required in this instance.
“His father showed me the place,” she said. “I kept digging and digging and I managed to find the diary.”
In the last text messages she sent me in May, Amelina said she was heading to Vakulenko’s village to deliver the International Publishers Association’s Prix Voltaire prize which had recently been awarded posthumously to the author.
She said she was about to conduct two interviews relating to the Vakulenko murder case and to deliver some children’s books to Kramatorsk.
The 37-year-old did not live to see justice for him.
On June 27, she was meeting Colombian journalists at a pizzeria in the city of Kramatorsk when a Russian missile struck the building.
More than 60 people were injured and 13 were killed.
Amelina died from her injuries five days later.
Kharkiv police say they are closing in on the suspects they believe may have abducted and killed Vakulenko.
“In the case of the murder of Vakulenko and three other civilians, information about the involvement in the crimes of servicemen of the so-called DPR/LPR, [Donetsk People’s Republic/Luhansk People’s Republic] who were part of the Russian military unit and subordinated to the command of the Russian army, is being verified,” says Colonel Bolvinov.
It was these units that Vakulenko’s father suspected of being involved in the murder of his son, and now evidence has emerged of them being involved in other crimes as well.
‘Drunk, violent’ militia shot children, report says
To mark the first anniversary of the liberation of Izium, the CIR has released a report identifying specific units of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republic militias that were based at locations that were later found to be torture sites.
After gathering evidence from victims, the international non-government organisation Human Rights Watch established that Izium’s school No.6 had been a torture site during the occupation.
Open-source investigators from the CIR have trawled through social media channels and concluded that the 5th Battalion of the 204th Infantry Regiment of the Luhansk People’s Republic militia was based at that school from April to July 2022.
Ben Strick, the director of investigations at CIR, said: “Investigators from our Eyes on Russia team have compiled strong evidence about which pro-Russian military units were based at or near torture sites in occupied Izium.”
“These soldiers may not have carried out torture themselves but they occupied the city, they guarded and protected these locations by their presence, and in doing so these soldiers enabled torture to take place.”
Mr Strick says those who survived the occupation described the militias from Luhansk and Donetsk as among the worst behaved of the occupying forces.
“They were often drunk, violent and looted homes and shops. There are reports of children being shot dead by drunk militia for breaking curfew and robbing homes while owners are held at gunpoint.”
Further CIR analysis indicates a Russian military unit from the 20th Army of the Western Military District, was stationed at another school in Izium that was used as a torture site.
The Kharkiv National Police are also using social media to help identify perpetrators of torture.
It posted pictures on the social media platform Telegram of about 2,000 Russian soldiers identified as being part of the occupation of the region.
Victims can use the network to identify torturers and their accomplices.
“People are continuing to contact us, including through the Telegram channel of the Investigative Department. The Telegram channel helps,” Colonel Bolvinov says.
The senior police officer is pushing for more prosecutions, even if they must be done in absentia.
“Police investigators continue to investigate war crimes, document and identify war criminals of the Russian Federation and/or the so-called LPR/DPR,” he says.
“We notify the Russian Federation of suspicion based on the collected evidence, carry out a special pre-trial investigation [in absentia] and refer cases to court for their consideration.”
It’s painstaking work, but given all they have seen in the past 18 months, Colonel Bolvinov and his team won’t be giving up in their pursuit of justice.
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