Extract from ABC News
As Vyacheslav Zadorenko walks along the platform at the train station at Kozacha Lopan, he's as close to Russian territory as any Ukrainian politician would dare to be.
WARNING: Readers might find the details in this story distressing.
"It's two-and-a-half kilometres to Russia that way," the mayor of Derhaci District says as he points down the train tracks to the city of Belgorod.
He's taking the ABC on a special trip through the village he grew up in, to speak on behalf of what he describes as the "hundreds" of civilians who were tortured here during the Russian occupation.
"As the war showed," he says, "the Russians have neither honour, nor conscience, nor dignity."
"These are the people who came to rape and kill."
As we descend into the basement of the railway station, which was commandeered by the Russians as an interrogation room, the evidence begins to emerge.
The mayor points to a blood-stained wet-wipe and starts telling the horrific story of what happened here.
"It was in this room they used psychological pressure and physical violence as they broke the will of the people," he says.
"They were kept in this room without food, they were not given the opportunity to sleep.
"Those who did not co-operate were sent to the torture chamber, where they were treated even more cruelly."
A few hundred metres away, the Russian occupiers allegedly set up their makeshift torture room in a large basement normally used for storing vegetables.
"In the main torture chamber, they used electric currents, hot wax and needles. They lifted people up to the ceiling, broke their hands and broke their ribs," he says.
The 44-year-old says many of those who had connections with the local council were tortured.
"Our volunteers, who helped us, went through the torture chamber," he says.
"One of the deputies of the city council, Oleg, had his teeth knocked out and his ribs broken in this torture chamber."
Mr Zadorenko says that Russian soldiers also came looking for him.
He claims they wanted to set up a sham referendum process to try and legitimise their occupation.
When they knocked on his door early one morning, he wasn't at home. He had left the village with his wife and children.
So, they grabbed his mother Natalia instead.
"They took her outside. They kept her in the snow for about an hour in her underwear while the house was searched," he says.
"After that, they took my mother to the basement, where they assaulted her with electric currents and psychologically pressured her.
"Then they threw her out into the street from the basement."
His mother was one of the lucky ones who made it out relatively unscathed.
Investigators amass evidence of war crimes
The Kharkiv National Police say that the basement in Kozacha Lopan is one of 27 places where Russian forces set up torture rooms in the Kharkiv region.
Serhii Bolvinov, the head of the investigations unit says his team has been methodically gathering evidence from the liberated territories.
"All these places have been carefully inspected by investigators and forensic scientists," he says.
"Police investigators have registered more than 11,000 criminal cases on war crimes and for us every case is a priority, especially cases where people were tortured."
Colonel Bolvinov says the evidence shows that torture was commonplace wherever Russians occupied towns and cities across the Kharkiv region.
"Torture was the norm for the Russian military. This is a violation of all international rules, all international laws, it is a war crime."
The Kharkiv police believes torture practices were not the twisted whims of rogue recruits. Instead they allegedly came from directions from the top.
It has identified at least one senior officer in the Russian army believed to have given orders to torture civilians in one of the villages of the Kharkiv region.
"This is the person who ran the torture chamber in the village of Pisky-Radkivskyi, who gave commands to the Russian military to commit war crimes," Colonel Bolvinov says.
"In this place the Russian military kept civilians in the basement in inhumane conditions, they beat them with sticks, intimidated them with firearms, shooting over their heads, used electric shocks and committed other illegal acts that were done without any purpose."
The Kharkiv National Police have been using the social media network Telegram to post pictures of the 2,000 Russian soldiers they have identified as being part of the occupation in the region.
They are asking victims to try and help identify the perpetrators of war crimes.
With most of the Russian soldiers having left liberated Ukrainian territory, justice could be hard to come by. But Colonel Bolvinov says that won't stop his investigators gathering the evidence.
"If a person is declared wanted, including internationally, he can be detained by a foreign country and transferred to Ukraine for appropriate punishment."
Morale remains high in the scarred village
The scars of occupation remain in Kozacha Lopan. Buildings are damaged, families have been left homeless, many residents are yet to return and some never will.
On the main street there are broken mobile phones nailed to one of the trees.
It's a grim reminder of how Russian soldiers seized people's phones to prevent them from communicating with the outside world about what was going on inside their village during occupation.
Being so close to the border means the residents here are still within artillery range of Russian forces and there has been regular shelling in recent weeks.
"Personally, I am no longer afraid of that," Liudmyla Vakulenko, the head of the local village administration, tells the ABC.
"When our territory was de-occupied, I'm not afraid of anything now.
"The fact that they continue to smash our buildings, try to destroy us – we will endure everything.
"I believe that the victory is coming soon, and we will continue to grow flowers, plant trees and to live here."
For Mr Zadorenko, his return to the village was particularly emotional.
He was worried his mother would be killed or taken hostage to Russia once it looked like the town would be liberated.
Before the National Guard took back Kozacha Lopan, the mayor drove into the village to try and locate his mother.
"With a small group of the partisan movement and with the border guards, we entered the territory of Kozacha Lopan," Mr Zadorenko says.
His mother was in her home, waiting to be taken to Russia.
"She still wants to look good, so she did her hair and sat waiting for either her execution or her release," he says.
A convoy of vehicles shuttled down her street, and when the cars pulled up, it was her son, not the Russians, who had come to get her.
The mayor burst out of the car and hugged the life out of his mother. It was a joyous moment captured on a video that went viral.
"First of all, I felt joy that my mother was alive, that people and family and friends were alive," Mr Zadorenko says.
"I felt joy that I could drive freely around the village, in which I was born, in which I grew up, in which I built my house.
"And I saw tears of joy in the eyes of the boys who took part in the partisan movement, that we were at home.
"We were ready to kill, to give our lives for our territory, our loved ones, the future of our children.
"When we drove to Kozacha Lopan, of course, there were emotions and feelings that could not be bought for any amount of money."
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