ABC News Foreign Correspondent Tom Sufi Burridge, who is in Kharkiv, spoke to ABC News’ “Start Here” on Wednesday about the latest developments. This handout photo released by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on Sept. 21, 2022 shows Ukrainian artillerymen firing from a cannon along the front line at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/AFP via Getty Images START HERE: Ukraine continues to push Russia out of some of its strongholds…and we’re just getting a glimpse of what life was like for the residents there, right? TOM SUFI BURRIDGE: Yes, exactly. We have been in areas of the newly liberated area. It took us about three hours to drive down there from the city of Kharkiv to the southeast of here. And we went to a city called Izyum, and it might be a name that’s starting to register with people right now. In the forest, next to the city, we visited a recently discovered mass burial site and what the Ukrainian authorities have been doing for the last few days, and we saw them working [with] those forensic teams in their white uniforms. I mean, really carefully digging down into the ground, into a kind of sandy soil under this pine forest to dig these bodies out, to get them out of the ground, [and] exhuming them so they can actually identify the victims. Now, I think what people may not realize about this when they’ve watched it in the headlines is that some of the people in that forest have died of natural causes. Now, they might have died prematurely because of lack of food, lack of water [and] lack of medicine in these Russian occupied territories during the war. And most disturbing, I think, is that some of the victims being pulled from the ground, according to Ukrainian officials, show signs of torture. A forensic explosives expert examines a crater from a rocket explosion at a freight train station in Kharkiv on September 21, 2022, amid Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images We also met a guy called Sergey who still lives in Izyum. We met him in his apartment building, which was destroyed by a Russian missile strike. More than 40 of his friends and neighbors were killed during this attack and most of them are now buried in this forest burial site. We met relatives climbing these graves. They go there to try to find relatives to try to locate where their relatives are. And we actually met a lady who had a piece of paper and it had the number of her husband’s grave. He knew where he was. He was killed in a Russian airstrike or bombing, but she had two numbers for her mother-in-law. And she had no idea which of the two graves, which were numbered, was the correct grave for her mother-in-law. START HERE: Well, then, consider these cities that have been under Russian control for several months, not weeks, but months. And does that help explain what happened in the last 24 hours? Because I heard that Russia is now organizing referendums in some of the pockets of Ukraine where they have control. And these referendums would be like a vote, like do you want to be part of Russia? To which I would say, like, that this might be a fake election. I’m sure Russia will say, “Yes, everyone wants to be Russian now” – that doesn’t mean it’s true. So why was this announcement such a big deal? BURRIDGE: I think it’s a huge deal because…I’m pretty sure they’re not going to be free and fair. This will not be a vote that will be recognized internationally. In the White House and the Pentagon [they] they say it’s a scam. And I think most people in the western world would agree with that. And now we’re basically seeing Russia saying, “Okay, we’re going to say that all this territory of ours in the south and east is actually Russian property. We’re going to officially recognize that this is Russian land.” And the reason this matters is because in the war that follows, it raises the stakes a bit and raises the possibility that if Ukraine with Western-supplied weapons attacks those territories, Russia might try to claim that it’s a direct attack on Russia. and you get more. START HERE: Now suddenly the response is like they attacked St. Petersburg or they attacked some border town in Russia. This is how they will react. BURRIDGE: Now, that’s, I think that’s the principle that they’re setting in their rhetoric. Now, obviously, I think some analysts are already saying, well, wait a minute. And in fact you’re already hearing it from American officials. They say, “This is Russian superiority. This is part of their information game.” Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech on the conflict with Ukraine, in Moscow in this still image from video released on September 21, 2022. Sputnik via Reuters They try to raise the stakes. Putin is on the ropes. It has weakened massively after losing huge amounts of ground in north-east Ukraine, around Kharkiv, where we are. And he’s in trouble. He is increasingly isolated internationally. The last few days have been very interesting at home. It is difficult to read in Russia. We don’t know what public opinion is like. The media is very controlled. There is no freedom of expression, etc. For example, a great Russian singer recently came out on Instagram and basically, and he really came out for the first time against the war. And this is a figure that is really very popular across generations, like someone that really extends to the older generations as well, who are traditionally kind of Putin’s followers. So Putin is in trouble and he’s in a corner and now he’s coming out with these kinds of tactics to raise the stakes on the battlefield. And it’s like a slightly dangerous moment. [ ]
