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In northeastern Ukraine, during a counteroffensive, the national forces regained parts of their territory and expelled the Russian military.

In the liberated areas, however, instead of relief, stories of torture and murder began to emerge among the population during the long months of Russian occupation. 

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Artem, who lives in the town of Balaklia in the Kharkiv region, told the BBC that he was held by Russians for more than 40 days and was tortured with electric shocks.

Balaklia was liberated on September 8 after more than six months of occupation.

The epicenter of the brutality, however, was the city's police station, which Russian forces used as their headquarters.

Artem said he heard screams of pain and terror coming from other cells, and the Russian occupiers made sure the captives' cries were heard by turning off the building's noisy ventilation system.

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“They turned it off so everyone could hear people screaming when they got electrocuted.

They (the Russian occupiers - b.r.) did this every other day with some of the prisoners, among them there were women," he added, quoted by BTV. 

Artem explained that he had only been electrocuted once. 

“They made me hold two wires.

There was an electric generator, the faster it went, the higher the voltage.

They said "if you drop it, you're done".

Then they started asking questions.

They said I was lying and even started spinning it more and the tension was building,” he said.

He explained that he was detained because the Russians found a picture of his brother, a soldier, in uniform. 

Another person from Balaklia was detained for 25 days because he had the Ukrainian flag. 

School principal Tatiana said she was kept in the police station for three days and also heard screams from other cells.

We visited the police station and saw the Lord's Prayer scrawled on the wall of one of the cramped cells, along with notes showing how many days had passed.

Ukrainian police say eight men were held in cells meant for two people.

They explained that the locals were afraid to even walk past the station, lest they be caught by Russian soldiers.

In the center of Balaklia, where the Ukrainian flag is flying again, crowds of people gathered around a small truck to pick up food.

Many of them were elderly and looked exhausted.

During a short walk around town, one sees graves of people hastily buried by their neighbors.

A crude wooden cross marked the makeshift grave of a taxi driver named Petro Shepel.

His companion, whose identity is not yet known, also lies beside him.

The stench of death filled the air as the police exhumed the remains of the dead and sealed them in sacks.

Authorities say the two men were shot dead near a Russian checkpoint on the last day of the occupation.

Bodies of tortured civilians found in liberated Ukrainian village

Petro Valentina's mother watched the bodies being exhumed and was outraged at the Russians who had killed her only son.

“I want to ask Putin why he shot and killed my son?

For what?

Who made him come here with such threatening weapons?

He not only killed our children, but also us, their mothers.

I am a dead woman and I want to appeal to all the mothers of the world: rebel against this murderer," Valentina said. 

Before the Russian troops left the city, they destroyed a school in a nearby village.

Russian invasion of Ukraine

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torture

Russian military