RSI – 19/09/2022
Izium is the major city liberated by the Ukrainians in their counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region in late summer 2022.
A strategically important location, which had allowed the Russians to control the entrance to the Donbas from the north for some time.
For months many people lived in shelters, practically without understanding what was happening outside. When we arrived, a few days after the retreat of the troops from Moscow, some inhabitants were still hiding, they didn’t even trust what their relatives told them.
The city is destroyed and largely still deserted. No internet coverage. The only area from which it is possible to access the network is a gas station.
In the forest on the outskirts of Izium, next to the cemetery, the Kharkiv war crimes prosecutor’s office is coordinating the exhumation of hundreds of corpses, buried in a hurry during occupation.
In this reportage (in Italian) for RSI (Swiss National Public Radio and Television) you can see what an Ukrainian city just freed from Russian occupation looks like. Pictures and editing by Claudio Enrico Maggiolini…
