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What Izium's mass graves revealed on 15 September 2022
Summary
A look back at the day Ukrainian police reported a mass grave of more than 440 bodies in recaptured Izium, as the Kharkiv counteroffensive continued.
What did Ukrainian forces find when they entered Izium? On 15 September 2022, Ukrainian police said a mass grave containing more than 440 bodies had been discovered in the recently recaptured city in Kharkiv Oblast.
The discovery came during the Kharkiv counteroffensive, which the Armed Forces of Ukraine launched on 6 September 2022. It began in early September in eastern Ukraine, shortly after Ukraine announced the start of a separate counteroffensive in the south around Kherson in late August.
The graves near Izium
The site was found in woods near the city. As reported later, there were several mass graves in the area, and one of them held at least 440 bodies. The graves contained people killed by Russian forces. The Ukrainian government believed that more than 1,000 civilian residents had died during the battle for Izium and the subsequent Russian occupation.
Other reports from the preceding days
The discovery was one of several security developments reported in the days before 15 September.
On 13 September 2022, the Ukrainian military said it had shot down an Iranian-made HESA Shahed 136 combat drone operated by Russia near Kupiansk, in Kharkiv Oblast. An inscription on the drone identified it as an "M214 Geran-2", a designation that did not immediately match any known Russian weaponry.
On 14 September 2022, Russian forces launched eight cruise missiles at the dam of the Karachunivske reservoir. The strike caused extensive flooding in Kryvyi Rih and raised the water level in the Inhulets River by 2.5 metres.
A day of grim findings
Taken together, the reports from those three days showed a war being fought on several fronts: ground advances in the north-east, the use of drones in the same region, and missile strikes on civilian infrastructure farther south. The Izium finding, announced on 15 September 2022, concerned the fate of civilians in a city that had been under Russian occupation.
