Ukraine Russia war latest: 146 bodies exhumed from mass grave near Izium, governor says

Vladimir Putin is “failing on all of his military strategic objectives”, the UK’s chief of the defence staff has said.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said pressure is mounting on the Russian president as his country’s defences weaken in the face of Ukrainian counterattacks.

It comes after UK intelligence said it was unclear whether Russia’s frontline forces have adequate reserves or morale to withstand attacks from Ukrainian forces.

My colleague Furvah Shah has more:

Ukrainian forensic experts have so far exhumed 146 bodies, mostly civilians, at a mass burial site near the town of Izium in eastern Ukraine and some bear signs of a violent death, the regional governor said on Monday.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said some 450 bodies are believed to have been buried at the site in a forest on the outskirts of Izium, which was recently recaptured by Ukrainian forces during a counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region.

Oleh Synehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, said the exhumed bodies included two children.

“Some of the dead have signs of a violent death. There are bodies with tied hands and traces of torture. The deceased were also found to have explosive, shrapnel and stab wounds,” Synehubov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

The forensic experts, dressed in white protective suits and wearing rubber gloves, have been working methodically for days to exhume and identify the bodies, whose makeshift graves were marked by flimsy wooden crosses.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday rejected Ukraine‘s allegations as a “lie”.

Residents have previously said some of the graves in the forest were of people who died in a Russian airstrike.

Ukraine‘s first lady said it was a “great honour” to be present at the Queen’s state funeral, “on behalf of all Ukrainians”.

Olena Zelenska, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife, was among hundreds of heads of state and dignitaries from around the world gathered in Westminster Abbey for the service on Monday.

She represented her war-torn nation at the ceremony on behalf of her husband, as he continues to organise the fightback against Russian invaders.

Mrs Zelenska said the Queen’s attention to Ukraine “was an important signal of support”.

“She wished us better times and shared our desire for freedom. We will always remember it with deep gratitude,” she wrote on Twitter.

Wearing all-black, Mrs Zelenska sat by the aisle, four rows behind French President Emmanuel Macron, in the historic church.

The German military will supply Ukraine with four more Panzer howitzer 2000 tanks together with an additional ammunition package, the German defence ministry said on Monday.

Delivery will be possible and follow immediately after discussions take place with industry on the early intake of refurbished ordnance from army maintenance, the ministry said in a statement.

Famous Russian artist and singer Alla Pugacheva has spoken out against the war in Ukraine publicly for the first time and urged Moscow to label her a “foreign agent”.

This comes a week after her husband Maxim Galkin was labelled a “foreign agent” for opposing the war in Ukraine.

On her Instagram, where the 73-year-old singer has more than 3 million followers, Ms Pugacheva asked the country’s justice ministry “to include me on the foreign agents list of my beloved country”.

“Because I stand in solidarity with my husband, who is an honest and ethical person, a true and incorruptible Russian patriot, who only wishes for prosperity, peace and freedom of expression in his motherland,” she added.

My colleague Maroosha Muzaffar has more:

Russia has rejected allegations its forces had committed war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Izyum as a “lie”.

It was the Kremlin’s first public statement about the allegations.

Around 450 bodies – most of whom Ukraine says are civilians – were found in mass graves near Izyum after Russian troops were this month forced out of the Kharkiv region, much of which they had controlled since the first weeks of their military campaign in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that investigators at the site have found evidence of torture, including bodies with hands tied, and accused Russian troops of committing war crimes.

Our international editor, David Harding, has more:

President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed there would be no let-up in Ukraine‘s fight to regain its territory as Kyiv said its troops had crossed the Oskil River, preparing for an assault on Russia‘s occupation forces in the eastern Donbas region.

Meanwhile, Russian forces struck the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in Ukraine‘s southern Mykolaiv region but its reactors have not been damaged and are working normally, Ukraine‘s state nuclear company Energoatom said.

Elsewhere, 13 people were killed in artillery shelling in the eastern Ukrainian separatist-held city of Donetsk, the city’s Russian-backed mayor said.

A Russian proxy court in eastern Ukraine on Monday sentenced two former Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) staff to 13 years in prison on treason charges that the OSCE called “inhumane and repugnant”.

The court in the Russian-backed breakaway Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) – one of two self-proclaimed “people’s republics” in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine – announced the sentences on Dmytro Shabanov and Maxim Petrov in videos aired by state-run media.

Separatist authorities said the pair, detained in April, had been recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Ukraine’s secret services and were passing information about Luhansk’s military personnel and equipment to Washington.

The regional security body, which numbers Russia and Ukraine among its 57 members, said the charges were “fabricated” and that the men had been punished for performing their official duties.

In videos from a makeshift courtroom in the city of Luhansk, Shabanov, an OSCE security assistant, was seen standing in a metal cage, wearing black trousers and a black hooded top.

He stood silently as the verdict was read out before men in police uniforms handcuffed him, pushed his head down and took him from the court.

Petrov, a translator for the OSCE, stood in a glass cage, kept his hands in his pockets and appeared not to react as he was sentenced.

Both had worked for the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM), established in 2014 to monitor the conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Kyiv’s forces that erupted after Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. The SMM ceased operating this year after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Polish Foreign Minister and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Zbigniew Rau said in a statement: “Our Mission members have been held unjustifiably for more than five months in unknown conditions for nothing but pure political theatre. It is inhumane and repugnant.”

OSCE Secretary-General Helga Maria Schmid said the pair had been “performing official duties” and called for their “immediate and unconditional release”.

The OSCE also said it was concerned for the fate of a third mission member detained in the LPR.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania closed their borders Monday to most Russian citizens in response to the wide domestic support in Russia for the war in Ukraine.

Under the coordinated travel ban, Russians wishing to travel to the Baltic countries and to Poland as tourists or for business, sports or cultural purposes will not be allowed in even if they hold valid visas for the European Union’s checks-free Schengen Area.

The prime ministers of the three Baltic nations and of Poland agreed earlier this month to stop admitting Russian citizens, saying the move would protect the security of the European Union member countries neighboring Russia.

“Russia is an unpredictable and aggressive state. Three-quarters of its citizens support the war. It is unacceptable that people who support the war can freely travel around the world, into Lithuania, the EU,” Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said Monday.

“Such support for hostilities can pose threats to the security of our country and the EU as a whole,” she added.

The ban includes exceptions for humanitarian reasons, family members of EU citizens, Russian dissidents, serving diplomats, transportation employees and Russians with residence permits or long-stay national visas from the 26 Schengen countries.

There were no indications of new travel restrictions Monday for Russians seeking to enter Poland, even though the country agreed with the Baltic countries to introduce the ban by Sept. 19. Poland, which borders Russia‘s Kaliningrad exclave, still has tight restrictions on Russian travelers remaining in place from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thirteen people were killed in artillery shelling on Monday in the east Ukrainian separatist-held city of Donetsk, the city’s Russian-backed mayor said.

In a statement posted on the Telegram messenger app, Donetsk’s separatist mayor Alexei Kulemzin said that 13 civilians including two children had been killed in the strike on Donetsk’s Kuybyshevsky district.

He said that the number of wounded was being confirmed.

Donetsk city has been controlled by the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic since 2014. The Ukrainian army continues to hold positions on Donetsk‘s outskirts, and the city has come under artillery fire repeatedly in recent months.

Reuters is usually unable to confirm battlefield reports.