Ukraine president calls for UN action following Bucha killings

Editor’s note: This story contains disturbing details

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy is calling on the UN Security Council and the international community to hold Russia accountable for the horrific deaths of Ukrainians.

Zelenskyy, speaking from Ukraine, addressed Security Council diplomats Tuesday amid demands for an investigation of possible war crimes as disturbing images of citizens killed in Bucha have come to light.

“Now the world can see that what the Russian military did in Bucha while keeping the city under their occupation but the world has yet to see what they have done in other occupied cities and regions of our country. Geography might vary but [the] cruelty is the same,” he said.

Zelenskyy says the recent violence shows more action and accountability is needed from the UN and other world leaders.

“I would like to remind you of Article 1, Chapter 1 of the UN Charter, ‘what is the purpose of our organization?’ Its purpose is to maintain peace and make sure peace is adhered to,” he said, questioning inaction from the UN.

“Do you think that the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately,” he said.

Civilians tortured, murdered in Ukraine city

Associated Press journalists confirmed evidence Moscow’s soldiers deliberately killed civilian in Bucha and counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and apparently without weapons, many shot at close range and some with their hands bound or their flesh burned.

The United Nations’ top human rights official is calling for independent and effective investigations into what happened. Liz Throssell says video footage from Bucha and other Ukrainian areas show clear evidence that civilians were viewed as targets by the Russian military.

“The brutality, the targeting of the civilians really underscores this is so concerning. Really looking at the video footage coming out of there, all the signs are the victims were directly targeted,” Throssell said.

The international community has condemned the killings. Germany and France reacted by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they were spies. U.S. President Joe Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes.

“This guy is brutal, and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous,” Biden said, referring to the town northwest of the capital that was the scene of some of the horrors.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the scenes outside Kyiv as a “stage-managed anti-Russian provocation.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the images contained “signs of video forgery and various fakes.”

Russia has rejected previous allegations of atrocities as fabrications by Ukraine.

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After touring neighborhoods of Bucha and speaking to hungry survivors lining up for bread, Zelenskyy pledged in a video address that Ukraine would work with the European Union and the International Criminal Court to identify Russian fighters involved in any atrocities.

“The time will come when every Russian will learn the whole truth about who among their fellow citizens killed, who gave orders, who turned a blind eye to the murders,” he said.

Ukrainian officials said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv that were recaptured from Russian forces.

The Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office described one room discovered in Bucha as a “torture chamber.” In a statement, it said the bodies of five men with their hands bound were found in the basement of a children’s sanatorium where civilians were tortured and killed.

The bodies seen by AP journalists in Bucha included at least 13 in and around a building that local people said Russian troops used as a base. Three other bodies were found in a stairwell, and a group of six were burned together.

The dead witnessed by the news agency’s journalists also included bodies wrapped in black plastic, piled on one end of a mass grave in a Bucha churchyard. Many of those victims had been shot in cars or killed in explosions trying to flee the city. With the morgue full and the cemetery impossible to reach, the churchyard was the only place to keep the dead, Father Andrii Galavin said.

Tanya Nedashkivs’ka said she buried her husband in a garden outside their apartment building after he was detained by Russian troops. His body was one of those left heaped in a stairwell.

“Please, I am begging you, do something!” she said. “It’s me talking, a Ukrainian woman, a Ukrainian woman, a mother of two kids and one grandchild. For all the wives and mothers, make peace on Earth so no one ever grieves again.”

Another Bucha resident, Volodymyr Pilhutskyi, said his neighbor Pavlo Vlasenko was taken away by Russian soldiers because the military-style pants he was wearing and the uniforms that Vlasenko said belonged to his security guard son appeared suspicious. When Vlasenko’s body was later found, it had burn marks from a flamethrower, his neighbor said.

Though united in outrage, the European allies appeared split on how to respond. While Poland urged Europe to quickly wean itself off Russian energy, Germany said it would stick with a gradual approach of phasing out coal and oil imports over the next several months.

Red Cross aid not coming to Mariupol

An international Red Cross team has shelved hopes of entering the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol after being held overnight by police in a town about 20 kilometres to the west. The team was eventually released but will not be entering the besieged city to provide help to the remaining residents trapped within.

More than 1,500 civilians were able to escape Mariupol on Monday, using the dwindling number of private vehicles available to leave, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. The southern port city has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the war.

The UN says they are aware of the current situation preventing the international aid organization from reaching those who could not escape.

“The amount of destruction, the amount of human suffering that we are seeing in places that we can reach, it is really shocking and it is urgent that people receive life-saving humanitarian assistance,” Throssell said.

More Russian troops sent to Ukraine

It comes as Russian forces on Tuesday were preparing for an offensive in Ukraine’s southeast, the Ukrainian military said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government is pouring soldiers into Ukraine’s east to gain control of the industrial heartland known as the Donbas. That follows a Russian withdrawal from towns around the capital, Kyiv, which led to the discovery of corpses, prompting accusations of war crimes and demands for tougher sanctions on Moscow.

Russian forces are focused on seizing the cities of Popasna and Rubizhne in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the Black Sea port of Mariupol, the General Staff said on its Facebook page. Donetsk and Luhansk are controlled by Russian-backed separatists and recognized by Moscow as independent states. The General Staff said access to Kharkiv in the east, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was blocked.

“The enemy is regrouping troops and concentrating its efforts on preparing an offensive operation in the east of our country,” the statement said. “The goal is to establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”

Russia withdrew many of its forces from the area around Kyiv after being thwarted in its bid to swiftly capture the capital. It has instead poured troops into southeastern Ukraine.

About two-thirds of the Russian troops around Kyiv have left and are either in Belarus or on their way there, probably getting more supplies and reinforcements, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment.