During the occupation of Kherson, the Russian military threw the bodies of their dead comrades into the local landfill and burned them there.
The Guardian writes about this with reference to local residents and workers.
Interlocutors of the publication said that in the summer, at the end of the occupation, the military made the landfill a prohibited zone and closed it from prying eyes. Residents said they saw open Russian trucks driving up there with black bags, which they threw out and then set on fire, filling the air with thick acrid smoke and the smell of burning flesh.
“Every time our army fired at the Russians there, they took the remains to the dump and burned them,” said Iryna, a 40-year-old resident of Kherson.
At the end of June, Ukraine was actively recapturing the city, and Kyiv used HIMARS jet systems. Around the same time, according to residents, the military began using the landfill.
Journalists from The Guardian visited the landfill, located on the northwestern outskirts of the city, five days after the liberation of Kherson and spoke with employees of the landfill, as well as with several residents of the city, who confirmed the statements made by other Kherson residents in the summer. “The Russians chased a KamAZ truck filled with garbage and corpses and unloaded everything together,” said a garbage collector from Kherson, who asked not to be named.