Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said the exact number of bodies in the mass grave in Lyman is not yet known.
Ukrainian authorities have found a mass grave in the recently liberated eastern town of Lyman and it is unclear how many bodies it contains, regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Kyrylenko, the governor of eastern Donetsk province, wrote on Telegram on Friday that officials in Lyman “found a mass grave where, according to local information, both soldiers and civilians may be buried. The exact number has yet to be determined.”
In a separate report, the Ukrinform news agency quoted a senior police officer as saying the grave contained 180 bodies. The Kyiv Post also tweeted that a mass grave was found in Lyman “where 180 bodies are buried,” including very young children.
Ukrainian troops retook Lyman in the Donetsk region from Russian control last weekend.
📸 On #Lyman, #Ukrainian Authorities found a mass grave in which 180 bodies are buried.
Some of them are children born between 2019 and 2021.
Photos: Donbas Realii pic.twitter.com/2nVAI8h21K
— KievPost (@KievPost) October 7, 2022
Ukrainian authorities have regularly accused Russian troops of committing atrocities in occupied territories, an accusation Moscow denies.
Last month, the bodies of 436 people were exhumed from a burial site in the northeastern city of Izyum after it was liberated. Most appeared to have died violent deaths, local officials said.
The discovery at Izyum prompted the European Union to call for a war crimes tribunal in Ukraine, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has dispatched its largest team of experts ever to investigate alleged war crimes since the Russian invasion began in February.
United Nations investigators have already concluded that war crimes have been committed in the Ukraine conflict, including Russian bombardments of civilian areas, executions, torture and sexual violence.
The UK and Netherlands have also deployed war crimes investigators to Ukraine to support local and International Criminal Court teams investigating possible mass atrocities, including in the Kyiv city of Bucha, where civilians were found murdered in April.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that Ukrainian forces have now retaken nearly 2,500 square kilometers (965 sq mi) of territory from Russia in the counteroffensive that began late last month.
“In total, since the beginning of this offensive operation, 2,434 square kilometers of our country and 96 settlements have already been liberated,” Zelenskyy said in his daily speech on social media.
Russian forces announced earlier Friday that they had gained ground in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, their first claim of battlefield gains since Kyiv gained momentum with its lightning-fast counteroffensive that has profoundly rocked Russia’s war effort.
