The body of a young woman and a keychain with the stars of the EU, was outside a burned house in Irpin, Ukraine | Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke It is not in the United States’ interest to stop war crimes – at least not if that means fighting Russia, according to White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki. Preventing atrocities such as the killing of civilians in Ukraine is not in the EU’s interest – at least not if it means higher gas prices or colder houses in winter, according to Austrian Finance Minister Magnus Brunner. Evidence of brutal killings and torture by Russian forces in Bukha, a city on the outskirts of Kiev, has sparked outrageous outrage and frustration at the highest levels of government in some of the world’s most powerful nations – from Chancellor Olaf Soltz Emanuel Macron in Paris to Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London and across the ocean to President Joe Biden in Washington. Listen to the story behind the image Voice of photojournalist Ignatius Ivlev-Yorke But as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the UN Security Council on Tuesday, none of these powerful men has any intention of doing anything to intervene immediately in the hope of halting the offensive of Russian troops in Ukraine. – although everyone recognizes that what was discovered in Bucha is almost not the worst of what has happened and is still happening in areas that remain under Russian control. “Unfortunately, what we predicted happened,” Psaki told a White House news conference on Tuesday. “And we may have seen the tip of the iceberg just because we had access to it. “We did not have access to an area of ​​the country where they have probably also committed atrocities.” But amid repeated questions about whether Biden – perhaps the only leader on Earth who could mobilize an international coalition to intervene militarily in Ukraine – could or would do so to stop Russia’s war crimes immediately, her answer “The president’s goal is: And his responsibility is to make decisions that are in the interest of the United States and the national security of the United States and the American people, and that is not to go to war with Russia.” It never happens again – almost real-time documented by cell phone cameras, with graphic images being shared in minutes around the world and first-person accounts being published even with mass graves filled with dirt still freshly turned . But even in Europe, where the EU was built on the ashes of World War II as a self-proclaimed peace plan, leaders can or do not want to do anything but demand “accountability” – they literally demand prosecution while the armed killers are still there. ongoing. loose, chasing more victims. The futility of all this was strongly recorded at the United Nations on Tuesday, when Zelensky gave a speech that narrated some of the butchers in Bucha and even showed the diplomats a video to see some of the evidence for themselves. Zelensky described how Russian soldiers tortured his citizens. “I am addressing you on behalf of the people who honor the memory of the deceased every day,” Zelensky said. “The memory of the killed civilians. Who were shot in the back of the head or in the eye after being tortured. Who were shot only in the streets. They were thrown into the well, to die there tortured. Killed in apartments, houses, exploded by grenades. Who were crushed by tanks in civilian cars in the middle of the road. For fun. Whose limbs were cut off, whose neck was cut off. “They were raped and killed in front of their own children.” He said special targets were set for those people who refused to renounce their allegiance to Ukraine, who refused to tell Russian invaders who came to kill, loot and steal on Ukrainian soil that they were rightly responsible. “Their language was torn only because they did not hear from them what they wanted to hear,” Zelenski said. In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg described the atrocities in Bucha and other cities on the outskirts of Kiev as “unbearable barbarism that Europe has not seen in decades” and warned that Russia was shifting its focus to the central focus. The eastern Donbass region, which has been at war for more than eight years, is now preparing for what Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk called a “colossal attack”. Gumenyuk, who has recorded the horrific tax war across her country, is now preparing for even more unspeakable horror. “After the massacre of Boutsa, we feel we have to change the way we deal with this war,” Gumeniuk wrote in the Guardian. “Before, we tried to understand Russia’s military strategy, so that we could be better prepared. “But a case of rape in a village near Kharkiv, mines in a botanical garden in Trostanyets and the shooting of blindfolded men in the peaceful suburbs of Kiev – these actions make no sense other than the desire to punish the Ukrainians.” . At the United Nations, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, who finally admitted this week that his country had started a “war” in Ukraine and not a “special military operation”, categorically denied that Russian forces had committed war crimes. As soon as he looked up as he read from a prepared statement, Nebenzia told Zelenskyy: “We place in your conscience the baseless accusations against the Russian army.” In an unrelated speech, Nebenzia spoke out against the mythical Nazi Ukrainians, but did not deny that Russian soldiers who claimed to be unjustly accused had in fact invaded and occupied Ukrainian territory. It was unclear whether Nebenzia really expected anyone to believe his charge of “criminally organized events” in which Ukrainian civilians were “killed by their own radicals” and not by Russian troops who invaded and occupied Bucha for weeks. Zelenskyy had a number of awkward questions for the diplomats sitting around the wooden horseshoe-shaped meeting table – and especially for the leaders of the Western powers who created the international security architecture that failed to protect Ukraine. “How does this differ from what the Daesh terrorists did in the occupied territories?” Asked the Ukrainian president, “except that it is done by a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.” Zelensky accused Russia of wreaking havoc around the world, violating state borders, sparking wars, killing civilians, promoting corruption and spreading misinformation. “So where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee?” Zelensky asked. “There is no security. Although there is a Security Council, it is as if nothing happened. “So where is the peace that was created to guarantee the United Nations?” If the Ukrainian president had any hope that his words would urge the US or its EU allies to take action, the Biden government quickly extinguished it – given the president’s continuing fear that entering into an armed conflict with Russia would endanger a nuclear war. At the White House, Psaki acknowledged “Zelensky’s disappointment, which we share, that Russia is a permanent member of the UN Security Council.” But he quickly added: “We do not see this changing.” As for the atrocities in Bukha, Psaki said the United States would provide additional military assistance to help the Ukrainians continue to defend their country on their own, with details to be announced later. After the Security Council meeting on Tuesday, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN, Sergiy Kyslytsya, said the West had to face the reality of its weakness. “The current security architecture as it stands is not capable of guaranteeing and providing security,” Kyslytsya told reporters. “This is a fact and you can not deny it.”