Mass graves found in Ukraine cities liberated from Russia

Ukrainian authorities found a mass burial site near a recaptured northeastern city previously occupied by Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday night.

Associated Press journalists saw the site in a forest outside Izium on Thursday.

A mass grave bore a marker saying it contained the bodies of 17 Ukrainian soldiers. 

It was surrounded by hundreds of individual graves with only crosses to mark them.

Zelenskyy invoked the names of other Ukrainian cities where authorities said retreating Russian troops left behind mass civilian graves and evidence of alleged war crimes.

Russia's forces left Izium and other parts of the Kharkiv region last week amid a stunning Ukrainian counter-offensive.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy made a rare trip outside Ukraine's capital to watch the raising of the national flag at Izium's city hall.

Sergei Bolvinov, a senior investigator for Ukrainian police in the eastern Kharkiv region, told British TV broadcaster Sky News that a pit containing more than 440 bodies was discovered near Izium after Kyiv's forces swept in. 

He described the grave as one of the largest burial sites in any one liberated city.

Ukraine's deputy interior minister, Yevhen Enin, said Thursday night that evidence of the occupying Russian troops setting up multiple torture chambers where both Ukrainian citizens and foreigners were detained in completely inhuman conditions was found in cities and towns recaptured during Kyiv's sweeping advance into the Kharkiv region.

He claimed that among those held at one of the sites were students from an unspecified Asian country who were captured at a Russian checkpoint as they tried to leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory.

Enin did not specify where the students were held, although he named the small cities of Balakliya and Volchansk as two locations where the alleged torture chambers were found. 

His account could not be immediately verified independently.