BUCHA, Ukraine
Russian forces on Tuesday were preparing for an offensive in Ukraine’s southeast, the Ukrainian military said, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared to talk to the U.N. Security Council amid outrage over evidence Moscow’s soldiers deliberately killed civilians.
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.”
Zelenskyy, speaking from
Ukraine, planned to address Security Council diplomats Tuesday amid demands for
an investigation of possible war crimes.
Germany and France reacted by
expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they were spies. President
Joe Biden said 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.Volunteers collect bodies of murdered civilians, in Bucha, close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 4, 2022.
Before Zelenskyy speaks, the
most powerful U.N. body is due to be briefed by Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres; his political chief, Rosemary DiCarlo; and U.N. humanitarian chief
Martin Griffiths, who is trying to arrange a cease-fire. Griffiths met with
Russian officials in Moscow on Monday and is due to visit Ukraine.
Associated Press journalists
in Bucha 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.
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.
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.
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.A dead civilian with his hands tied behind his back lies on the ground in Bucha close to Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday April 4, 2022.
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.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador,
Vassily Nebenzia, insisted Monday at a news conference that during the time
that Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person has suffered
from any violent action.”
However, high-resolution
satellite imagery by commercial provider Maxar Technologies showed that many of
the bodies have been lying in the open for weeks, during the time that Russian
forces were in Bucha. The New York Times first reported on the satellite images
showing the dead.
Western and Ukrainian leaders
have accused Russia of war crimes before. The International Criminal Court’s
prosecutor has already opened an investigation. But the latest reports
ratcheted up the condemnation.
German Foreign Minister
Annalena Baerbock said the images from Bucha reveal the “unbelievable brutality
of the Russian leadership and those who follow its propaganda.”
French President Emmanuel
Macron said there is “clear evidence of war crimes” in Bucha that demand new
punitive measures.
“I’m in favor of a new round
of sanctions and in particular on coal and gasoline. We need to act,” he said
on France-Inter radio.
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.
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.
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 besieged southern port city has seen some of the heaviest fighting of
the war.
But amid the fighting, a Red
Cross-accompanied convoy of buses that has been thwarted for days on end in a
bid to deliver supplies and evacuate residents was again unable to get inside
the city, Vereshchuk said.
Elsewhere, Russian shelling
killed 11 people in the southern city of Mykolaiv, regional governor Vitaliy
Kim said in a video message on social media.
Zelenskyy appealed for more
weaponry as Russia prepares new offensives.
“If we had already got what we
needed — all these planes, tanks, artillery, anti-missile and anti-ship weapons
— we could have saved thousands of people,” he said. - AP
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