Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russian soldiers of committing war crimes and killing civilians in Kherson, parts of which were retaken by Ukraine’s army last week after Russia pulled out.
“Investigators have already documented more than 400 Russian war crimes, and the bodies of both civilians and military personnel have been found,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Sunday.
“The Russian army left behind the same savagery it did in other regions of the country it entered,” he went on. “We will find and bring to justice every murderer. Without a doubt.”
His allegations have not been independently verified. Russia denies its troops intentionally target civilians.
Ukrainian troops arrived in the centre of southern Kherson region on Friday after Russia abandoned the only regional capital it had captured since Moscow launched its invasion.
Russian shelling continues
The Ukraine Armed Forces’ southern command said on Monday that Russian forces continued to “inflict fire damage on our troops and de-occupied settlements along the right bank of the Dnipro”.
The governor of Kherson region, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said the authorities had decided to maintain a curfew from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. and ban people from leaving or entering the city as a security measure.
“The enemy mined all critical infrastructure,” Yanushevych told Ukrainian TV. “We are trying to meet within a few days and (then) open the city,” he said.
In an online post Yanushevych warned people about reports of humanitarian aid arriving in Kherson’s Freedom Square and urged people to steer clear of the centre of the city as demining operations were due to proceed there.
Zelenskyy also warned Kherson residents about the presence of Russian mines. “I am asking you please not to forget that the situation in Kherson region remains very dangerous,” he said.
Jubilant crowds
On Sunday, artillery exchanges echoing over Kherson failed to discourage crowds of jubilant, flag-waving residents bundled up against the cold from gathering on the city’s main square.
A day earlier, villagers holding flowers waited on the road to Kherson to greet Ukrainian soldiers as they poured in to secure control of the right bank of the Dnipro River.
The recapture of Kherson marks Moscow’s third major retreat of the war and the first to involve yielding such a large occupied city in the face of a major Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Mass graves have been found in several places across Ukraine since the start of the invasion in February, including civilian bodies showing evidence of torture discovered in the Kharkiv region and in Bucha, near Kyiv. Ukraine has accused Russian troops of committing the crimes.
A United Nations commission in October said war crimes were committed in Ukraine and that Russian forces were responsible for the “vast majority” of human rights violations in the early weeks of the war.