In a powerful speech to the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of the “most terrible war crimes” since World War II and rightly demanded that Russia face “full accountability” for its atrocities committed during its unprovoked invasion.
“They cut off limbs, slashed their throats, women were raped and killed in front of their children,” Zelenskyy said of Russian forces. “Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”
Other nations need not take Zelenskyy’s word for the existence of Russian war crimes. The world has been disgusted by images of dead civilians lying on the streets of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, from which Russian forces have withdrawn, and horrified by the accounts of abuse. U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Tuesday that what happened in Bucha was “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities.” President Joe Biden joined other world leaders in calling for the prosecution of Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes.
