Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has hailed its military’s swift counterattack in the eastern Kharkiv region on a visit to the recently liberated city of Izyum, and pledged to bring Crimea and the rest of Russian-occupied territory back under Kyiv’s control.
Mr Zelenskiy gave awards to troops involved in retaking the Kharkiv region, much of which was held by Russia for more than six months, as investigators arrived in the area to gather evidence of crimes allegedly committed by occupying troops.
“You can temporarily occupy the territory of our state. But you definitely cannot occupy the Ukrainian people,” Mr Zelenskiy declared in Izyum, which was an important transport hub in Russia’s supply lines to its forces in the neighbouring Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
“We should send signals to our people who, unfortunately, are still under occupation. And my signal to the people in Crimea is this ... We will return there. I don’t know when exactly. But we have plans, and we will return there, because this is our land and our people.”
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The Kremlin annexed Crimea in 2014 and also created heavily armed militias that seized control of large parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, in a localised conflict that became full-scale war in February when Moscow launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians and displacing millions.
The recent rout of Russian troops in Kharkiv is Ukraine’s biggest victory in the war since it forced Moscow’s troops to abandon their bid to seize Kyiv in April, when the liberation of towns close to the Ukrainian capital revealed evidence of alleged war crimes and other atrocities committed by the occupiers.
“Now that the Ukrainian military has liberated 6,000sq km of Ukrainian land in the east and south since the beginning of September, against the backdrop of joy over ... we are presented with a terrible picture of what the occupiers did, in particular in the Kharkiv region,” said Ukrainian prosecutor general Andriy Kostin.
Police officials in Kharkiv region say they are now investigating alleged mistreatment of locals by Russian troops — including reports that they operated a “torture chamber” in the town of Balakliya — and have exhumed bodies that show apparent signs of torture.
“It’s a shocking sight. But it doesn’t surprise me anymore, because we have already seen similar pictures in Bucha [outside Kyiv] and other liberated territories. So, it’s the same here: buildings destroyed, people killed,” Mr Zelenskiy said in Izyum.
Moscow denies mistreating people in areas of Ukraine that it has seized, and insists that its rapid withdrawal from Kharkiv was actually a planned redeployment of troops to Donetsk. It has failed to explain, however, why its soldiers simply abandoned large numbers of tanks and other vehicles and big ammunition stores that are now in Ukrainian hands.
Fighting remains intense in parts of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions, and Russian missiles continue to strike Ukrainian towns and cities. Kyiv said on Tuesday that rocket attacks over the previous 24 hours had killed at least seven civilians and wounded at least 22 others in several regions of Ukraine.
