Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy poses for a selfie with a police officer after attending a national flag-raising ceremony in the freed Izium, Ukraine, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022. Zelenskyy visited the recently liberated city on Wednesday, greeting soldiers and thanking them for their efforts in retaking the area, as the Ukrainian flag was raised in front of the burned-out city hall building. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
IZIUM, Ukraine (AP) — Hand on heart, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy watched his country’s flag rise Wednesday above the recaptured city of Izium, making a rare foray outside the capital while highlighting Moscow’s embarrassing retreat from a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russian forces left the war-scarred city last week as Kyiv’s soldiers pressed a stunning advance that has reclaimed large swaths of territory in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
As Zelenskyy looked on and sang the national anthem, the Ukrainian flag was raised in front of the burned-out city hall building. After almost six months under Russian occupation, Izium was left largely devastated, with apartment buildings blackened by fire and pockmarked by artillery strikes.
A gaping hole and piles of rubble stood where one building had collapsed.
“The view is very shocking, but it is not shocking for me,” Zelenskyy said in brief comments to the journalists, “because we began to see the same pictures from Bucha, from the first de-occupied territories … the same destroyed buildings, killed people.”
Bucha is a small city on the outskirts of Kyiv that Russian forces withdrew from in March. In the aftermath, Ukrainian authorities discovered the bodies of hundreds of civilians dumped in streets, yards and mass graves. Many bore signs of torture.
Prosecutors said they so far have found six bodies with traces of torture in recently retaken Kharkiv region villages. The head of the Kharkiv prosecutor’s office, Oleksandr Filchakov, said bodies were found in Hrakove and Zaliznyche, villages around 60 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Kharkiv city.
“We have a terrible picture of what the occupiers did. … Such cities as Balakliia, Izium, are standing in the same row as Bucha, Borodyanka, Irpin,” said Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, listing the names of places where the Ukrainians have alleged Russian forces committed atrocities.
Local authorities have made similar claims in other areas previously held by Russia, but it was not immediately possible to verify their information. They have not yet provided evidence of potential atrocities on the scale described in Bucha, where the number and conditions of civilian casualties prompted demands for Russian officials to face war crime charges.
Moscow’s recent rout in northeast Ukraine was its largest military defeat since the withdrawal of Russian troops from areas around Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. On the northern outskirts of Izium, the remains of Russian tanks and vehicles lay shattered along the road.
As Zelenskyy visited, his forces pressed their counteroffensive, demined liberated territory and investigated possible war crimes. He said that as Ukrainian soldiers retake occupied villages, “the life comes back.”
The Ukrainian governor of the eastern Luhansk region, Serhiy Haidai, said Ukrainian forces were preparing to retake the region, most of which has been under Russian control since July and which borders the Kharkiv region.
He told The Associated Press that Ukrainian guerrilla forces were flying Ukrainian flags in the cities of Svatove and Starobilsk.
But in Kreminna, another city where Ukrainians raised their flag, Russians returned Wednesday and “tore down the (Ukrainian) flags and are demonstrably showing that they’re there,” Haidai said.
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Source: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-zelenskyy-kharkiv-804757178408e1fdfbb69c3d149faf9b
