The police have launched a criminal inquiry into defilement of a common grave of fighters-liberators and the tomb of Marshal Yury Bazhanov at the second city cemetery in Kharkiv.
“Police officers have searched through the area, have seized material evidence and have collected the initial material. The fact of the event is placed on the Unified register of pretrial investigations on the basis of Part 1 Article 297 (encroachment on a grave, another burial place or the body of the dead person) of the Ukrainian Criminal Code,” the communications department of the National Police Main Department for the Kharkiv region said.
Head of the Kyivsky neighborhood administration in Kharkiv Nelly Kazanzhiyeva told Interfax-Ukraine earlier on May 5 that in the morning, when she came together with veterans to attend a flower-laying ceremony, she found the graves having been desecrated.
“Already on yesterday’s morning (on May 4) we have checked it and everything has been all right. But today, when we came together with veterans, we saw the tombstone together with the star having been fallen and a part of the monument to Marshal Bazhanov having been torn away,” Kazanzhiyeva said.
She pledged that the stele will be restored in the course of the day.
This is already third case of defaming the graves since last November.
Police have not found those guilty yet.
