The Russian occupation left a huge scar in the form of mass graves in Izium

The forests of Izium hide a great tragedy written by Russia on the door of the street Shakespeare (so they write), named after the English playwright. This city in eastern Ukraine, which had a population of 50,000 before the war, was occupied by Moscow troops from April to September 10, leaving behind a huge scar in the form of mass graves.

He was the worst defeat the invaders suffered from the collapse of the northern front of Kiev, a defeat which the inhabitants of Izium they paid dearly. The battle was fierce. Cities near the route that goes from Kramatorsk, such as Dolina and Kamenka, were destroyed, the bridge on the Donetsk River was blown up, and it hurts to look at the buildings at the entrance to the city.

Kremlin troops set up their main base near the old cemetery, a bleak cemetery camouflaged among tall pines, most of them burned after the fighting. Next to the graves of the dead of Izium, the enemies dug trenches for their tanks and armored vehicles, and expanded this city of the dead with improvised individual and collective niches.

After the end of the occupation, the authorities carried out an exhumation 436 bodies, of which 30 had traces of torture. All but 21 soldiers were civilians, according to authorities. Volodymyr Zelensky condemned what he described as a “war crime”.

executions

The Russians set up a military base surrounded by death. “I didn’t hear any screams. just shots, lots of shots. The torture chambers were in the city, here they directly executed», recalls Sergej Cherniak, A 62-year-old retired truck driver who holed up in his home on Shakespeare Street throughout the occupation. A house with a view of the forest that once looked like a mushroom-picking paradise, but now like a mess.

Sergei refused to allow Russian officers to live in his house. Sometimes he gave them potatoes, but he hardly had any contact with them. As they began to retreat, he took the opportunity to go for wood and found himself face to face with horror. “It was raining and there were a few soldiers left. They were busy burying the body. Suddenly I saw several heads sticking out of the mud. I called them animals and asked them to at least throw more mud at our soldiers, be treated with dignitybut they were in a hurry to finish,” he narrates with his eyes lost in the grove and barely pausing between words.

He regurgitates the past that torments him and his pain leaves you deaf. This trucker doesn’t want to set foot in the “mine-filled” forest again. “They are brown in color and you can step on them without realizing it. That’s why we hear explosions from time to time. Before we had mushrooms, now mines».

A walk through the graves

Grigorija and Tamara Moroz They were the other two neighbors who remained in their homes during the Russian presence. “I was looking at the Russians a small hole in the wall. At first it looked like a pioneer camp, they even had a kitchen, but then bodies started arriving. I was scared because they were afraid that they wouldn’t notice us and shoot at us from their tanks,” recalls Tamara from Šekspirova 9.

They want to visit the cemetery because They have many relatives buried there, among them his grandfather, who fought in World War II. They walk calmly despite the ice on the main track. Not a single slip. Tamara is helped by her stick, Grigoriy flies through the pines and talks and talks, as Sergei did before. “At the beginning of the occupation, people were afraid and when someone died, they would bury him in their garden or at their neighbor’s, but then the mayor appointed by the Russians ordered the bodies to be brought here and they expanded the cemetery. These niches were dug by the Russians,” he says as his boots sink into a mixture of mud and snow. He points to the side where a large hole is visible. “Our soldiers lay there”he whispered.

The landscape changes abruptly from mud and open niches from which bodies were exhumed to tombstones of those who died before the war. Some were destroyed by bombing, an unexploded rocket buried in the ground awaits the arrival of a special team to remove the artifact, and Gregori takes off his hat when he arrives at his grandfather’s grave. Stillness. What were the Russians thinking? Did they think we were going to give up? The attack on Kiev changed everything, something was broken between us forever and nothing will ever be the same again, Sergey thinks before returning to that house from where his wife watched the Russians through a small hole in the wooden wall. A spy from which William Shakespeare himself could unleash his plots of revenge, life, death, sanity or madness. Not even the dead can rest in peace on Izium.