Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of committing genocide in his country
President Biden on Monday called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes and said he’d seek more sanctions after reported atrocities in Ukraine. “You saw what happened in Bucha,” Biden said, adding that Putin “is a war criminal.”
“We have to gather all the detail” for a war crimes trial, Biden said. “This guy is brutal, and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone’s seen it.”
After Russia withdrew from some areas around Kyiv, Ukrainian officials found 410 bodies in towns near Kyiv as part of an investigation into possible war crimes by Russia. Ukrainian mayor and her family were reportedly killed and thrown into a pit in a forested area. Olga Sukhenko, the mayor of the Ukrainian town of Motyzhyn, near Kyiv, was allegedly shot alongside her husband and son for refusing to comply with Russian demands, the AP reported.
Russia has claimed that the incident was “staged” after its troops left the town. However, satellite images of Bucha in Ukraine appeared to show bodies lying in the street nearly two weeks before the Russians left the town.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the images coming out of Bucha were “a punch to the gut” and promised to help Ukraine document “war crimes” being committed by the Russian troops. “The most important thing is we can’t become numb to this. We can’t normalise this. This is the reality of what’s going on every single day as long as Russia’s brutality against Ukraine continues,” he told CNN.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply shocked” by images of dead civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and called for an independent investigation that “leads to effective accountability.”
Independent journalists who went into the town of Bucha over the weekend found the streets littered with bodies. The dead were wearing civilian clothing, and some had their hands tied behind their backs, apparently executed. Others were buried in a mass grave.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says Russia committed genocide in Bucha
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of committing genocide in his country, saying “These are war crimes and need to be recognized by the world as genocide.” Visiting the town of Bucha, he vowed to hold Russia accountable for treating Ukrainians “worse than animals.” He said that “We are being destroyed and exterminated,” adding that “this is happening in the Europe of the 21st century.”
