Official reports two grave sites in liberated Ukrainian city of Lyman

According to a Thursday online post by Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, two graves have been discovered near the city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine. Last week, Lyman was released from Russian control.

According to a message by Kyrylenko on the social media network Telegram, one site included over 200 individual burials, all of which are believed to be civilians. The second was a mass burial that may contain both Ukrainian military personnel and civilians. Kyrylenko stated that the exact number of bodies in both grave sites is unknown.

Russia evacuated its troops from Lyman on October 1 after Ukrainian forces successfully surrounded the city during a successful counteroffensive to recapture Ukrainian territory.

On October 6, 2022, destroyed armored vehicles are stacked beside a facility in Lyman, Ukraine. The image was captured by Narciso Contreras/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.

Since September 7, a Ukrainian official reported that at least 530 remains had been discovered in reclaimed parts of the Kharkiv region.

The First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Yevhen Yenin, stated on Friday that the remains included 225 women, 257 men, and 19 children, with 29 bodies still unidentified.

Approximately 447 remains were discovered in the mass grave in Izium. According to Yenin, forensics scientists have discovered indicators of “violent death in a significant number of victims,” including symptoms of torture.

According to Yenin, certain bodies “had a rope around their neck, their hands tied behind their back, bullet holes in their knees, and fractured ribs.”

Since the beginning of the conflict, 1,350 civilians have died in the Kharkiv region. Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the Investigative Department of the State Police in the Kharkiv region, stated that 22 torture sites were discovered in newly liberated territories.