Power poles down, cables strewn on ground; Burnt-out houses and cratered streets – the village of Grakove in eastern Ukraine bears the scars of the bitter Ukrainian counter-offensive.
“It was scary,” said 61-year-old Anatoly Vasiliev, recalling this week’s battle when Ukrainian troops retook Grakove from the Russians.
“There were bombings and explosions everywhere.”
Vasiliev was standing in front of the local church, whose bell had been damaged by a projectile.
Some of the Russian soldiers “took phones, but I managed to keep mine by hiding it so I could communicate with my family,” he said.
Ukrainians have announced significant territorial gains in the eastern Kharkiv region.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that 30 cities had been recaptured there.
Dogs and cats search for leftovers between the rubble scattered in Grakove and in front of houses that are still inhabited.
Only about 30 of the village’s 800 pre-war residents remain.
The road leading to Grakove from Ukraine’s second largest city of Kharkiv, a regional hub, is lined with the skeletons of cars destroyed in explosions or crushed by tanks.
– ‘I was scared’ –
Disarmed mines are scattered along the roadside, waiting to be picked up. A tow truck carries away a captured Russian military vehicle.
Two armored cars are driving in the opposite direction, bringing troops to the front. Artillery fire echoes in the distance.
In the village, police and a team from the Kharkiv region prosecutor’s office are exhuming the bodies of two men in their 30s.
Officials here suspect a war crime: the remains show signs of torture and execution.
Villager Sergiy Lutsay told AFP that Russian soldiers forced him at gunpoint to bury the bodies.
“They came to my house. I was with my 70-year-old father,” he said.
“I was afraid they would threaten him. They told me to come and dig a hole.”
This, he said, was shortly after the start of the Russian invasion on February 24.
A prosecutor’s office official said the bodies would be sent for a medical examination to determine the cause of death.
– ‘Evidence of Atrocities’ –
Sergiy Bolvinov, deputy police chief of the Kharkiv region, said Lutsay told them that the victims “had wounds on the back of their heads and their ears were cut off”.
Lutsay did not confirm the details to journalists.
Ukraine has accused Russian forces of a series of war crimes in towns and villages outside of Kyiv, which recaptured its forces in March.
Ukraine reoccupied the territory when Moscow withdrew its forces after a failed attempt to capture the capital earlier in the invasion.
“This is not the only evidence of the atrocities committed by the Russians,” Bolvinov said.
“There are two other places like this in the village. We will examine them.”
Police warned journalists not to stray from roads or examine abandoned buildings because demining operations are ongoing.
