Those on a break mostly stood with their spades and goggles, looking on at their colleagues from the state rescue services who were red in the face from the hard labour of tugging the bodies out of the graves and sweating in their blue plastic overalls.
In woods a few kilometres from the centre of Izium, the north-eastern Ukrainian town recaptured by Kyiv earlier this month, hundreds of police detectives, prosecutors, forensic doctors and journalists gathered at the site of burials revealed after the Russian retreat.
"We have found 445 graves here in this place alone," said Oleksandr Filchakov, the chief prosecutor for the Kharkiv region that includes Izium. "Then, a few metres away, we found a big grave containing 17 Ukrainian soldiers buried together. Most of the civilians were buried individually."
Locals say those being exhumed from the site were killed by Russian forces, who occupied the strategic city for six months, using it as a base for the assault on the eastern Donbas region.
Denne historien er fra September 23, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra September 23, 2022-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
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Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
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