Children and whole families?: Apparently mass grave discovered in liberated Lyman

After the liberation of the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman, the authorities kept discovering new traces of the Russian occupation there.

Children and whole families?: Apparently mass grave discovered in liberated Lyman

After the liberation of the eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman, the authorities kept discovering new traces of the Russian occupation there. According to the authorities, the latest find is another mass grave. It is still unclear how many victims are involved.

According to local authorities, a new mass grave has been discovered in the liberated eastern Ukrainian city of Lyman. In addition, 200 other graves were found, said the responsible military governor on Telegram. Emergency services have already started exhuming. Donetsk Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko reported the discovery in a post on his Telegram channel. He also published pictures of people in white protective suits digging through the ground.

According to initial findings, the dead could be both Ukrainian soldiers and civilians. It is not yet clear how many bodies are in the mass grave. According to the police, several small children and entire families were among the people killed. Aside from the mass grave, Kyrylenko said 200 individual graves "where civilians are buried" have also been uncovered in the area. Lyman in the Donetsk region, which was temporarily occupied by Russian troops, was liberated by the Ukrainian army in early October.

Ahead of Kyrylenko's announcement on Friday, Ukraine's first deputy interior minister Yevhen Yenin said that 530 bodies of civilians have been found in northeastern Ukraine's Kharkiv region since Sept. 7. Most of the bodies belonged to the 436 exhumed from unmarked graves after the Russian withdrawal from the northeastern city of Izium. Many of those bodies had injuries consistent with violent deaths, according to local officials.

According to Ukrainian officials, Russian forces occupying Ukrainian territory have routinely committed rights violations and atrocities. Moscow denies the allegations despite mounting evidence of a Russian role in the torture and deaths of thousands of Ukrainians after the occupation by Russian forces.