BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — Police and other investigators roamed the quiet streets of ruined towns around Ukraine’s capital, documenting widespread killings of unarmed civilians and other suspected war crimes by Russian forces that could spark new war crimes. Western sanctions as early as Wednesday.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has kept up demands for war crimes trials for Russian troops and their leaders, he and others are increasingly warning that the Russians are regrouping for a new attack on eastern and southern Ukraine. Ukraine.
So far, Ukrainian forces are holding off Russian troops trying to advance into the east of the country, but they continue to be outnumbered in both troops and equipment, Zelenskyy said in a video addressed to his country Tuesday night.
“But we have no choice: the fate of our land and our people is being decided,” he said. “We know what we are fighting for. And we will do everything possible to win.”
In recent days, a global outcry has erupted over lurid images of what appeared to be intentional killings of civilians in Bucha and other towns before Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of kyiv. The evidence has prompted Western nations to expel dozens of diplomats from Moscow and propose more sanctions.
The United States, in coordination with the European Union and the Group of Seven major economies, is expected to implement more sanctions on Wednesday, including a ban on all new investment in Russia, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition. anonymous to discuss the next announcement.
In addition, the EU executive branch proposed to ban coal imports from Russia. It would be the first time the 27-nation bloc has sanctioned the country’s lucrative energy industry for the war. Coal imports amount to about 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) a year.
Zelenskyy spoke by video Tuesday before the UN Security Council about alleged executions in the 6-week invasion that has seen countless civilians killed by Russian bombing and airstrikes on cities and towns.
He said civilians in towns around Kyiv had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown into wells, grenaded in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.
Zelenskyy said both those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders “must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes” before a tribunal similar to the one established in Nuremberg after World War II.
Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said that while Bucha was under Russian control, “no local person has suffered any violent action.” Reiterating what the Kremlin has maintained for days, he said the video images of bodies in the streets were “a gross fake” staged by the Ukrainians.
“You only saw what they showed you,” he said. “The only ones who would fall for this are Western dilettantes.”
As Zelenskyy spoke to diplomats, survivors of the month-long Russian occupation showed investigators the bodies of villagers allegedly shot by Russian troops.
Police and other investigators walked the still largely empty streets of Bucha, where dogs roamed among dilapidated buildings and burned-out military vehicles. Officials took photos of the bodies before collecting some of them.
Survivors who hid in their homes during the occupation, many of them elderly, wandered among charred tanks and jagged window panes with plastic bags of food and other humanitarian aid. Red Cross workers checked the intact houses.
Associated Press journalists in Bucha counted dozens of bodies in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who described witnessing atrocities. Additionally, high-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, during the time Russian forces were in the city.
The dead in Bucha included a pile of six charred bodies, as witnessed by AP reporters. It was not clear who they were or under what circumstances they died. One of the bodies was likely that of a child, said Andrii Nebytov, police chief in the kyiv region.
Many of the dead seen by AP reporters appeared to have been shot at close range, and some had their hands tied or their flesh burned.
AP and the PBS series “Frontline” have jointly verified at least 90 incidents during the war that appear to violate international law. The War Crimes Watch Ukraine project is investigating the apparent targeted attacks, as well as the indiscriminate ones.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Bucha’s footage revealed “not the random act of a rebel unit” but “a deliberate campaign to kill, torture, rape and commit atrocities.” He said the reports of atrocities were “more than credible.”
“Only non-humans are capable of doing this,” said Angelica Chernomor, a refugee from kyiv who crossed into Poland with her two children and saw Bucha’s photos. “Even if people live under a totalitarian regime, they should keep their feelings, their dignity, but they don’t.”
Chernomor is among the more than 4 million Ukrainians who have fled the country following the February 24 invasion.
Russia has rejected similar accusations of atrocities in the past, accusing its enemies of faking photos and videos and using so-called crisis actors.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague opened a month ago an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
In another part of Ukraine, in Borodyanka, northwest of kyiv, a 25-year-old man, Dmitriy Yevtushkov, searched through the rubble of apartment buildings and discovered only a photo album of his family’s home remained.
In the besieged southern city of Mykolaiv, a passerby paused briefly to gaze at the bright flowers of a vandalized flower stand that lay amid bloodstains, the legacy of a Russian shell that killed nine people in the city center earlier in the day. This week. The spectator drew the sign of the cross in the air and moved on.
Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that by withdrawing from the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army is regrouping its forces to deploy in eastern and southern Ukraine for a “crucial phase of war”. Russia’s stated goal is currently control of Donbas, the largely Russian-speaking industrial region in the east that includes the shattered port city of Mariupol.
“Moscow does not give up its ambitions in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
While Ukrainian and Russian representatives sent optimistic signals after their latest round of talks a week ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow will not accept Ukraine’s demand that a possible peace deal include an immediate withdrawal of troops followed by a Ukrainian referendum on the agreement.
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Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, and Associated Press journalists from around the world contributed to this report.
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