Ukraine discovers ‘torture rooms’ in recaptured Kharkiv region

Ukraine said Friday it had discovered at least 10 locations in territory recaptured from Russian forces in the east of the country that had been used for torture.

As Ukrainian troops have retaken swaths of territory in the northeast, officials have said they feared discovering Russian war crimes in newly-liberated areas.

“I can talk about the presence of at least 10 torture centers in settlements” in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine’s police chief Igor Klymenko said during a briefing, the Interfax news agency reported.

He said “two torture centers were found in Balakliya,” a town in the northeast.

Klymenko also said authorities had opened 204 criminal cases probing possible war crimes committed by Russian forces over the past week.

Meanwhile, AFP journalists saw hundreds of graves in a forest next to the recaptured city of Izyum, after Kyiv announced the discovery of mass burial sites.