In the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, cruise missiles fired by Moscow at the neighboring country blocked buildings and streets in the Kharkiv region for several days. Then they were collected and moved to a fenced area in the industrial district of Kharkiv, which became known as the “rocket cemetery”, reports Guardian.

According to Ukrainian military estimates, since the beginning of the war, Russia has fired more than 5,000 cruise missiles, in addition to other types of missiles. A large number of them fell on Kharkiv.

Officials working for the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office seized, recorded and cataloged them before moving them to a cordoned-off area in an industrial district of Kharkiv that became known as the “missile graveyard.”

More than 1,000 explosives and rocket fragments are lined up, covering an area that could be half a football field.

Local authorities say that one day these devices may become part of a museum in memory of the atrocities of the war. In the meantime, however, Ukrainians hope the remains can provide information that will help incriminate Russian authorities and Russian soldiers.

“This place was created for the collection of evidence of war crimes,” said Dmytro Chubenko, the spokesman of the prosecutor’s office of the Kharkiv region. “All these devices were found in the city of Kharkiv. But this is only half of what they fired at us. This is evidence that we hope will be used in the international criminal court,” he said.

About 95% of all devices stored in the missile graveyard are parts of multiple rocket launcher systems (RCMS), including multiple rocket launcher systems (RCMS), including the Smerch systems, which can be used to carry cluster bombs, which have been banned by most countries of the world in accordance with the 2008 agreement and were used. by Russia in areas of Ukraine where neither military personnel nor military infrastructure existed.

Colonel-General Oleksandr Zhuravlev is under the crosshairs of prosecutors in Kharkiv

Analyzing the types of devices fired, their flight paths and the GPS location of where they landed, prosecutors in Kharkiv are investigating dozens of Russian soldiers and officials, including Colonel General Alexander Zhuravlev, who commanded one of the war’s most brutal divisions from Syria. According to some sources, Yuravlev was the only high-ranking Russian officer who could sign the order for a missile attack on Kharkiv from the Smerch.

• Who is the Russian general who oversaw atrocities in Syria and oversaw the cluster bombing of civilians in Ukraine

Through analysis of satellite images in collaboration with the Center for Information Resilience (CIR) and an on-the-ground investigation, CNN has identified the reactive artillery brigade that struck residential neighborhoods in Ukraine’s second-largest city with cluster munitions on the day several civilians were killed. or wounded after several Smerch missiles were fired at Kharkiv during a key 48-hour period in late February.

This brigade was directly subordinated to the same military leader – Colonel-General Oleksandr Zhuravlev, who led one of the most brutal stages of the war in Syria.

Several military experts told CNN that Zhuravlev — the Russian equivalent of a theater commander in the U.S. Army — was the only officer authorized to order a Smerch missile strike in his area.

In October 2022, RBC reported on the dismissal of the commander of the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Zhuravlev, who was replaced by Lieutenant General Roman Berdnikov.

The announcement of Yuravlyov’s release came shortly after the dramatic losses recorded by Russia in northeastern Ukraine and the recapture of the city of Lyman by Ukrainian forces. Moscow used Lyman as an important logistics center in the Donetsk region.

How to analyze the remains of munitions at the missile burial ground

Chubenko noted that the analysis of ammunition is important for the investigation of responsibility for alleged crimes on Ukrainian soil.

Ammunition is marked with a series of codes that indicate the manufacturer and, less commonly, the military unit that performed the maintenance.

You can see what numbers and letters these missiles are marked with,” said Chuubenko.

“With their help, we were able to identify which factory produced them and sometimes which military unit stored and maintained them.”

Neil Corney, a research fellow at the Omega Research Foundation, an independent UK organization dedicated to providing evidence-based information on the production, trade and use of military, security and police technology, said identifying the facility where the missiles were stored was essential to investigating potential war crimes. .

“Ideally, if you want to link the use of ammunition to a crime, you have to show the chain of custody,” Corney said.

This chain includes the storage and maintenance of ammunition, its distribution to the military unit, its use, its location at the scene of a potential crime, and the safe storage of its remains.

The missiles led to the identification of a Russian general, whose name has not been released because of the ongoing investigation, as the one who ordered at least 100 missiles from the Russian-occupied north to hit the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology.

According to the authorities, more than 1,700 people, including 44 children, died in Kharkiv and its surroundings from Russian bombings.