In the recently de-occupied Balaklia of the Kharkiv region, the Russian occupiers organized a "headquarters" in the police station, and tortured local residents in its basement.
Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the Investigative Department of the Kharkiv Region National Police, reported this on September 13.
During the occupation, the Russians always kept at least 40 people captive, feeding them twice a day with plain porridge. Through local collaborators, they were looking for those who served or had relatives in the ATO (Ukrainian military operation in Donbas in 2014-2022), and they were also looking for people who helped the Ukrainian army. If the occupiers released many people and there were no new ones, they grabbed people on the street near the police station.
According to witnesses, people were tortured in different ways, and the investigators also have information about the murdered residents of the city, who were shot by the Russians at the checkpoint on the last day of the occupation.
Hromadske published a photo from the police station, which was a torture chamber during the occupation of Balaklia.
- On September 13, Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar reported that during the counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, the Ukrainian military liberated more than 300 settlements (the real figure is almost twice as large). The operation will continue until the region is completely liberated.
- On September 10, the Ministry of Defense of Russia actually recognized the loss of the towns of Izyum and Balaklia in the Kharkiv region, but called it an "operation to roll back and transfer troops." The purpose of this "rolling back" is to transfer the troops to the Donetsk direction.