When the situation for the Russian occupiers in Cherson deteriorated in the summer, residents of the city observed suspicious activities at the local garbage dump. It is assumed that Moscow’s military is eliminating victims of the fighting on the site.
Before the liberation of the southern Ukrainian city of Cherson, the Russian military is said to have disposed of fallen soldiers at the local landfill. This is reported by the British “Guardian”, citing testimonies from residents and workers at the landfill. According to this, several people reported to the newspaper how Russian trucks with black sacks arrived at the site, which were then burned. The air smelled of burnt flesh.
“Every time our army fired at the Russians there, they took the bodies to the landfill and burned them,” a 40-year-old Kherson resident was quoted as saying. Another woman said: “They came here, left some guards, unloaded and burned. One day my husband and I came at the wrong time. We came here while they were doing their ‘business’ and they missed mine man a hard blow in the face with a club. I didn’t see the remains. They buried what was left.”
According to landfill workers, the Russians selected and cordoned off an area on a remote side of the landfill. Since the area could be mined, it is still closed for security reasons, reports the “Guardian”. The witness statements could therefore not be independently verified by the newspaper.
“I felt sick smelling that smoke,” said a resident of a large apartment building near the landfill. “And it was also scary because it smelled like burnt hair, and you know, it also smelled like at the dentist when they drill out your tooth before putting a filling in. And the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see the building next door could.” A neighbor added: “The stench from the smoke from the landfill was so bad that we couldn’t even open the balcony door. There were days when you couldn’t breathe because of the smell.”
According to the information, the burnings at the landfill began in the summer, as Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the region was gaining momentum. According to the Guardian, many of those questioned suspect that the landfill was the easiest way to dispose of the bodies, since Ukrainian shelling made the bridges across the Dnipro no longer passable for heavy vehicles.
The Ukrainian authorities have not yet commented on the issue. However, the Ukrainian secret service assumes that the Russian military authorities unofficially disposed of many dead soldiers in order to then declare them “missing in action”. This would cover up the actual losses. Last May, the online portal Ukrayinska Pravda reported on a wiretapped call from a Russian soldier who was talking about a landfill full of corpses in the Donetsk region.