NBC News
Life, Death, and Liberation: Izium, Ukraine
NBC News documentary — an NBC team spent weeks inside the bombed-out city of Izium hearing the stories of those who survived Russian occupation, torture, and relentless bombardment.
About this reporting
In September 2022, Ukrainian forces retook Izium — a city of roughly 50,000 in the Kharkiv region — after months of Russian occupation. Investigators moving in behind the retreating army found a mass burial site containing hundreds of graves, some marked only with numbers, alongside evidence of torture and summary detention.
What the reporting examined
The NBC News documentary was built on weeks spent inside Izium: the bombed-out center where residents had sheltered, the gravesite at the town cemetery where exhumations were underway, and — above all — the testimony of survivors: families who buried relatives in yards and fields, men who described being detained and tortured, and residents rebuilding as winter arrived with much of the city’s housing destroyed.
McLaughlin’s role
Correspondent. McLaughlin spent extended time inside Izium for the documentary, interviewing survivors, prosecutors and investigators as the scale of what had happened under occupation became clear.
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