Civilians and soldiers were tortured on Parkova Street, according to Ukrainian police investigators now combing towns and villages from which Russian forces hastily withdrew last month. But what is surprising about this place is how bland its horrors have become.
In at least five different provinces, Russian troops left behind the remnants of an archipelago of torture, often in buildings where families lived or where children played.
On Friday, the chief investigator of the northeastern province of Kharkiv, Serhii Bolvinov, said his forces had recovered 534 bodies of civilians in the eastern province of Kharkiv, most of them from a mass grave in the city of Izyum. Many showed signs of torture.
In Lyman, 100 miles to the southeast, a key transport hub for Russian forces before it was recaptured by the Ukrainian military last week, the local governor said a further 39 “burial sites” had been discovered. It was not clear how many bodies were buried there or how they had died. The youngest was born last year.
Under Russian occupation, Ukrainians learned that even the most mundane places could become a stage for terror. Police have found torture sites in basements, living rooms and gardens. In the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, the men were abused and executed in the basement of a children’s summer camp. In Izyum, the soldiers used a kindergarten and a medical clinic.
Bolvinov said his investigators have found 22 sites that were used for torture in the Kharkiv region.
The house in Pisky Radkivsky, a small town east of Izyum, was used as a base for about 10 Russian soldiers, including a major, and they interrogated civilian and military prisoners there, police said.
The uniforms of the National Guard of Ukraine are still lying in the tall grass. Investigators found a gas mask that they believed had been placed on the detainees’ heads while they were being beaten. There was a dildo and a box of extracted teeth in one room. The items were submitted for DNA analysis to determine if they were used on the site.
The owner of the house watched silently from the street. “We don’t know what to do with this place now,” said Ivan, 40, who gave only his last name for fear of retaliation if the Russians return. “This was our house.”
She was carrying her one-year-old son in her arms, and the boy kept looking at the house and the strange men with clipboards inside. One of the victims, the local school janitor, Andrei Dimitriev, was giving her testimony, and he spoke in an exhausted monotone.
Dimitriev said he had been arrested on the street by Russian soldiers and held for seven days in the dank basement of the house. There were five other men shivering in the dark with him there, but he didn’t know them, and with the soldiers milling about in the garden, they were afraid they might be overheard talking to each other.
The beatings were savage, Dimitriev recalled. The soldiers beat his body with sticks and wooden bats. They were often drunk and their questions were unfocused, as if they themselves didn’t know what information they were looking for. They accused him of being a member of the Ukrainian army, but he said that he was not. The military insignia found among his belongings was a gift from a friend.
“No matter what you said, they just kept hurting you,” he said.
When he finished speaking, the investigator handed him a pen for what is now a widely used ritual: the signature on another page attesting to the war crimes suffered by ordinary people.
Ukraine’s judicial system is now devoted almost entirely to investigating them. But the thousands of researchers spread across the country are struggling to keep up.
In the liberated zones, each street has a story. Victims have often fled. Eyewitnesses they meet often say they did their best to ignore the horrors unfolding around them, fearing arrest themselves.
On Parkova Street, neighbors locked their doors when they heard noises in the house. Parents told their children not to ask questions. “You didn’t want to get on her bad side. It was easier that way,” said Tatiana, 48. But her 9-year-old daughter wouldn’t ignore it. At night, she would ask who was yelling. Tatiana didn’t know what to say to him.
Residents interviewed by The Washington Post said Russian forces occupied the home for two months and heard screaming, swearing and gunshots most days.
One woman said she saw two men in civilian clothes coming in with bags on their heads. Shots rang out shortly after. “It was just after noon,” she recalled. “I never saw them again.”
Serhii Korolchuk contributed to this report.