BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) – Moscow faced global disgust and accusations of war crimes on Monday after Russia’s withdrawal from the outskirts of Kyiv revealed streets, buildings and courtyards littered with the bodies of what appeared to be civilians, many of whom were apparent were killed at close range.
The grisly images of battered or burned corpses left in the open or hastily buried led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin, particularly a halt to fuel imports from Russia. Germany and France responded by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats who suggested they were spies, and US President Joe Biden said Russian leader Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes.
“This guy is brutal, and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous,” Biden said, referring to the city northwest of the capital that has been the scene of some scares.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy left the capital Kyiv on his first reported trip since the war began nearly six weeks ago to see for himself what he called the “genocide” and “war crimes” committed in Bucha.
In his late-night video address, Zelenskyy pledged that Ukraine would work with the European Union and the International Criminal Court to identify Russian militants involved in atrocities.
“The time will come when every Russian will know the whole truth about who among their fellow citizens was killed, who gave orders, who turned a blind eye to the killings,” he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the scenes outside Kyiv as a “staged anti-Russian provocation”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the images contained “signs of video forgery and various forgeries.”
Russia has similarly dismissed 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 have been retaken by Russian forces in recent days.
The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office described a room discovered in Bucha as a “torture chamber”. A statement said the bodies of five men with their hands tied were found in the basement of a children’s sanatorium where civilians were being tortured and killed.
Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in Bucha, including at least 13 in and around a building that local residents said Russian troops used as a base. Three other bodies were found in a stairwell and a group of six were burned together.
Many of the victims seen by AP appeared to have been shot at close range. Some were shot in the head. At least two had their hands tied. A bag of spilled groceries lay next to one of the victims.
Among the dead, witnessed by the news agency’s journalists, were bodies wrapped in black plastic, piled at one end of a mass grave in a Bucha churchyard. Many of these victims had been shot in cars or killed in explosions trying to flee the city. With the morgue full and the cemetery inaccessible, the only place where the dead are kept was the churchyard, Father Andrii Galavin said.
Tanya Nedashkivs’ka said she buried her husband in a garden outside their home after he was arrested by Russian troops. His body was one of those left piled in a stairwell.
“Please, I beg you, do something!” she said. “I’m talking here, a Ukrainian, a Ukrainian, mother of two children and one grandchild. For all wives and mothers, make peace on earth that no one mourns 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, which Vlasenko said belonged to his son, looked suspicious. When Vlasenko’s body was later found, it showed burn marks from a flamethrower, his neighbor said.
“I got closer and saw that his body was burned,” Pilhutskyi said. “They didn’t just shoot him.”
Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, stressed at a press conference on Monday that during the period that Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person suffered from violent actions.”
However, high-resolution satellite imagery from commercial provider Maxar Technologies showed many of the bodies lay outdoors for weeks during the time Russian forces were in Bucha. The New York Times first reported on the satellite images showing the dead.
In other developments, more than 1,500 civilians were evacuated from the besieged and devastated southern port city of Mariupol on Monday, using the dwindling number of available private vehicles to disembark, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
But amid the fighting, a Red Cross-escorted convoy of buses that was thwarted for days to deliver supplies and evacuate residents once again failed to get into the city, Vereshchuk said.
European leaders and the UN human rights chief joined the Ukrainians in condemning the bloodshed uncovered after Russian troops withdrew from the Kyiv area.
At the same time, many warned that the full extent of the horror is yet to be seen.
“I can tell you without exaggeration but with great sadness that the situation in Mariupol is much worse compared to what we saw in Bucha and other towns and villages near Kyiv,” said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba .
Zelenskyy was scheduled to speak at a previously scheduled UN Security Council meeting on Tuesday. British Ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward said the session would certainly focus on the killing of large numbers of civilians in Ukraine.
Western and Ukrainian leaders have previously accused Russia of war crimes, and the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has already opened an investigation. But recent reports have reinforced the sentencing.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the pictures from Bucha reveal the “incredible brutality of the Russian leadership and those who follow their propaganda”. And French President Emmanuel Macron said there was “clear evidence of war crimes” in Bucha that required new punitive measures.
“I am for a new round of sanctions, especially on coal and petrol. We must act,” he said on France-Inter radio.
Though united in outrage, European allies appeared divided on how to respond. While Poland urged Europe to quickly wean itself off Russian energy, Germany said it would stick to a phased approach of phasing out coal and oil imports over the next few months.
The US and its allies have tried to hit Russia with sweeping sanctions for the invasion, but fear further damage to the global economy, which is still recovering from the pandemic. Europe is in a particular quandary as it gets 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil from Russia.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki described Russia under Putin as a “totalitarian fascist state” and called for strong action “that will finally break Putin’s war machine”. “Would you negotiate with Hitler, with Stalin, with Pol Pot?” Morawiecki asked Macron.
Russia has withdrawn many of its forces from the capital area in recent days after being thwarted in its attempt to quickly seize Kyiv.
Instead, it has sent troops and mercenaries to the east of the country to seize control of the Donbass, the largely Russian-speaking industrial region that includes Mariupol, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting and suffering of the war.
About two-thirds of Russian troops around Kyiv have left and are either in Belarus or en route, where they are likely to get more supplies and reinforcements, said a senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment .
Russian forces also appear to be repositioning artillery and troops to try to take the town of Izyum, which lies on a key route to Donbass, the official said.
On Monday, Russian shelling killed 11 people in the southern city of Mykolaiv, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said in a video message on social media. Kim said nine of the victims died at a public transport stop in the city center.
Zelenskyy called for more weapons as Russia prepares a new offensive.
“If we had already got what we need – all these planes, tanks, artillery, anti-missile and anti-ship weapons – we could have saved thousands of people,” he said.
___
Qena reported from Motyzhyn, Ukraine. Yuras Karmanau in Lviv, Ukraine, Lolita Baldor in Washington and Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine