Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has continued to demand war crimes trials for Russian troops and their leaders, warning that they are preparing for new attacks in eastern and southern Ukraine.
During the night, Russian forces attacked a fuel depot and a factory in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine, said the governor of the region, Valentyn Reznichenko, in the Telegram messaging application early Wednesday. The number of victims was unclear.
“The night was disturbing and difficult. The enemy attacked our area from the air and hit the oil depot and one of the factories. The oil depot with fuel was destroyed. Rescuers are still extinguishing the flames in the factory,” Reznichenko wrote.
In the eastern Luhansk region, the bombing of the city of Rubizhne on Tuesday killed one person and injured five others, its governor, Serhiy Haidai, told the Telegram.
The Ukrainian military says Russian troops have focused on preparing for an attack in eastern Ukraine aimed at “establishing full control over the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.” Parts of the two regions have been under the control of Russian-backed rebels since 2014 and are recognized by Moscow as independent states.
So far, Ukrainian forces have been holding back Russian troops trying to push east, but they remain fewer in number in both troops and equipment, Zelensky said in a video clip in his country late Tuesday.
Ukrainian soldiers retrieve the remains of four dead civilians inside a charred vehicle in Bukha, on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine, on Tuesday. (Felipe Dana / The Associated Press)
“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 to win.”
In recent days, there has been a worldwide outcry over what appear to be deliberate killings of civilians in Bhutan and other cities before Russian forces withdraw from the outskirts of Kiev. The evidence led Western nations to expel many Moscow diplomats and propose further sanctions.
More sanctions are expected against Russia
The United States, in coordination with the European Union and the Group of Seven major economies, is expected to impose more sanctions on Wednesday, including a ban on all new investment in Russia, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity. the forthcoming announcement.
The EU executive also proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia, estimated at 4 billion euros ($ 5.4 billion Cdn) a year. It would be the first time the 27-nation bloc has imposed sanctions on the country’s lucrative energy industry over the war.
Locals line up for humanitarian aid in Bouha on Tuesday. (Efrem Lukatsky / The Associated Press)
Speaking via video to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Zelensky said citizens in cities around Kyiv had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown into wells, grenades blown up in their apartments and crushed to death by cars. .
The perpetrators of the killings and those who gave the orders “should be brought to justice immediately for war crimes” before a tribunal similar to the one set up in Nuremberg after World War II, he said.
Moscow’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, said “no locals” had suffered violence while Bush was under Russian control, and echoed the Kremlin’s comments, saying the video of corpses in the streets was “a brutal one”. forgery “directed by the Ukrainians.
CLOCKS Zelensky describes the horrific deaths of Ukrainian civilians at the UN:
Zelensky describes Butsa’s atrocities, shows documentary in UN raw speech
WARNING: This video contains graphic material Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a gruesome description of the horror left behind by Russian troops in Bucha to members of the UN Security Council as he made a passionate call to hold the Kremlin accountable. 2:02
“You only saw what they showed you,” Nebenzia said. “The only ones who would fall into this are Western amateurs.”
As Zelensky spoke to diplomats, survivors of a month-long Russian occupation showed investigators the bodies of residents of the city allegedly shot by Russian troops.
Journalists are counting dozens of corpses in Bouha
In the still largely empty streets of Bouha, dogs wandered among ruined buildings and burned 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 beyond middle age, passed through charred tanks and jagged glass plastic bags with food and other humanitarian aid. Red Cross workers checked in intact houses. Associated Press reporters in Buha counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who said they had witnessed atrocities. Also, high-resolution satellite images from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been in the countryside for weeks, while Russian forces were in the city. CLOCKS Refugees describe fleeing fighting:
Ukrainian refugees narrate horrific escape, soldiers get brief suspension from war
There is no end to the painful stories of fleeing the war in Ukraine, with growing fears that Russia will redeploy troops to the east of the country. In areas such as Irpin, where Russian forces have fled, the suspension has given Ukrainian soldiers a brief chance to see their family members again. 2:04
The dead in Bucha included a pile of six charred corpses, according to AP reporters. It was not clear who they were or under what circumstances they died. One of the bodies was most likely a child, said Andriy Nebitov, chief of police in the Kiev 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.
The AP and PBS Frontline have jointly confirmed at least 90 wartime incidents that appear to be in violation of international law. The War Crimes Watch Ukraine project looks at obvious targeted as well as indiscriminate attacks.
Police are preparing to collect the body of a civilian in Borodyanka, in the Kiev region, on Tuesday. (Gleb Garanich / Reuters)
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the images from Bucha revealed “not the accidental act of a rogue unit” but “a deliberate campaign to kill, torture, rape and commit atrocities.” He said reports of atrocities were “more than credible”.
China says reports and images of civilian deaths in Bhutan are “deeply worrying” and calls for an investigation.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Wednesday that China supports all initiatives and measures that “help alleviate the humanitarian crisis” in the country and “is ready to continue to work with the international community to prevent any harm.” to civilians “.
The attorney general of the International Criminal Court in The Hague launched an investigation a month ago into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
Elsewhere in Ukraine, in Borodyanka, northwest of Kiev, a 25-year-old man, Dmitriy Yevtushkov, searched the rubble of an apartment building and found that only one photo album was left of his family home.
In the besieged southern city of Mykolaiv, a passerby stopped for a moment to see the bright blossoms of a crumbling flower base among bloodstains, the legacy of a Russian shell that killed nine people in the city center. The spectator sketched the sign of the cross in the air and moved on.
CLOCKS The carnage and chaos of the war he left behind in a city in Ukraine:
The carnage and chaos of the war he left behind in a city in Ukraine
WARNING: This video contains graphic material Uncertainty surrounds the city of Borodyanka – near the Ukrainian capital Kiev – where residents face the carnage and chaos left by Russian troops without knowing if they will return. 2:51
In Andriivka, a small village about 60 kilometers west of the capital, two police officers from the nearby town of Makariv came on Tuesday to identify a man whose body was left in a field next to a Russian tank.
Captain Alla Pustova said officers had found 20 bodies in the Makariv area in the past two days as investigators worked to understand the scale of the atrocities said by retreating Russian forces around the capital.
Pope Francis kissed a battered Ukrainian flag sent to him from the city of Bukha during a weekly audience at the Vatican on Wednesday. He also welcomed half a dozen Ukrainian children to the stage in the Paul VI Hall. (Vatican Media / Reuters)
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, meanwhile, has warned that as he leaves the capital, the Russian military is reorganizing its forces to deploy them to eastern and southern Ukraine for a “critical phase” of the war. “Moscow is not abandoning its ambitions in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
While representatives of both Ukraine and Russia sent optimistic messages after the last round of talks a week ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would not accept Ukraine’s demand that a future peace agreement be reached immediately. followed by a Ukrainian referendum on the agreement.
