Since liberating the area around the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv from Russian occupation, police say they have discovered 25 torture camps there. In the camps, among other things, Russian troops held and tortured civilians in inhumane conditions, regional police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said on Facebook on Monday. Some prisoners received electric shocks, others had their fingers broken.
The area around Kharkiv was occupied by Russian troops for months. They only withdrew in early September after a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Since then, 920 civilian bodies, including 25 children, have been discovered in the liberated region, Tymoschko said. They were killed by Russian soldiers.
According to investigations by Ukrainian authorities so far, Russian armed forces have also committed war crimes in other occupied territories. After the withdrawal of Russian units from the Kiev suburb of Bucha, the bodies of over 400 people were discovered there. Most of them died violent deaths. Investigations are ongoing.