Ukrainian authorities say they have located makeshift prisons where Russian forces abused detainees before Ukrainian troops swept through the village of Kozacha Lopan in a major counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region this month. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said more than 10 such 'torture chambers' have been discovered in the region since the hasty withdrawal of Russian troops last week.
In a dank basement behind the local supermarket, metal bars cordon off a corner of the room to form a large cell. Dirty sleeping bags and duvets show three sleeping spots on top of sheets of Styrofoam for insulation from the damp earth floor. In the corner, two black buckets served as toilets.
Images the prosecutors released showed a Russian military TA-57 telephone with additional wires and alligator clips attached to it. Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of using the Soviet-era radio telephones as a power source to electrocute prisoners during interrogation. The team is also recovering bodies on the battlefield, which are lying where they fell on farm fields or inside burned-out tanks. The Russian army was pushed all the way back across the border into Russia after holding the area for months. But artillery shells still whistle through the air, fired from inside Russia and landing with resonating thumps and billows of black smoke on Ukrainian territory.
They document the scene and lift the remains into a body bag before heading farther along the track to a charred Russian tank. It takes only one of the team to carry away the body bag holding the remains of the Russian found inside.
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