Russia stands accused of “terrible” war crimes, as western leaders condemned the killings of unarmed civilians in Bucha and the surrounding areas of Kyiv in alleged atrocities that prompted fresh demands for tougher action against Moscow.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Kremlin-ordered attack on his country amounted to genocide, after local officials reported scores of civilians had been killed in the towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel near the capital.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s refusal to be subdued to Russia was the reason “we are being destroyed and exterminated”, describing the war to the US network CBS as “the torture of the whole nation”.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dymtro Kuleba, said Russia was “worse than Isis”.
Witnesses of alleged atrocities in Bucha told the Guardian that Russian soldiers, who have now withdrawn from the area, had fired on men fleeing the town, and had killed civilians at will.
Taras Schevchenko, 43, said Russian soldiers had refused to allow men to leave through a humanitarian corridor, instead shooting at them as they fled across an open field. Bodies, he said, were scattered on the pavements, with some of those killed having been “squashed by tanks … like animal skin rugs”.
Shevchenko’s mother, Yevdokia, 77, said she had witnessed an elderly man who had challenged a Russian soldier being shot dead as his wife stood next to him. “They shot him dead, and ordered the woman to leave,” she said. The accounts could not be independently verified.
Reporters from Agence France-Presse saw at least 20 bodies, all in civilian clothing, strewn across a single street in the town of Bucha on Friday. One had his hands tied behind his back with a white cloth, and his Ukrainian passport left open beside his body. “All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told AFP, adding that a further 280 bodies had been buried in mass graves in the town.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, said: “I am deeply shocked by the images of civilians killed in Bucha, Ukraine. It is essential that an independent investigation leads to effective accountability.”
The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the killings added to evidence of Russian war crimes, while the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, expressed shock about the “terrible and horrifying” footage from Bucha. “Streets littered with bodies. Bodies buried in makeshift conditions. There is talk of women, children and the elderly among the victims,” Scholz said.
The British ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, said it was clear that rape had been used as a weapon of war by Russian forces. She said: “Women raped in front of their kids, girls in front of their families, as a deliberate act of subjugation. Rape is a war crime.”
Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, condemned the killings of civilians in the town of Bucha as a “terrible war crime [that] cannot go unanswered” and called for a strengthening of sanctions. The country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said the images from Bucha were “unbearable”.
“Putin’s frantic violence is wiping out innocent families and knows no bounds,” she wrote on Twitter, adding that those responsible for war crimes must be held to account.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, described the killings at Bucha as “a punch to the gut” and joined western allies in vowing to document the atrocities to hold the perpetrators to account.
The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, said he was shocked by “haunting images of atrocities committed by [the] Russian army in liberated region of Kyiv”, adding that “further EU sanctions and support are on their way”.
The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she was “appalled by reports of unspeakable horrors in areas from which Russia is withdrawing”. An independent investigation was urgently needed, she said, and “perpetrators of war crimes will be held accountable”.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, France’s foreign minister, pledged France would work with Ukrainian authorities and the international criminal court (ICC) “to ensure these acts don’t go unpunished and that those responsible are being sent to trial and convicted”.
Johnson, who spoke on Saturday to Zelenskiy, said the UK “will continue to step up military, economic and diplomatic support, including further ramping up sanctions to increase the economic pressure on Putin’s war machine, while Russian troops remain on Ukrainian territory”.
He said the murder of innocent civilians in Irpin and Bucha was “yet more evidence that Putin and his army are committing war crimes in Ukraine”. The Russian president’s invasion was failing, Johnson added, and Ukrainian forces’ resolve had “never been stronger”.
Russia for its part tried to paint the situation in Bucha as somehow representing a “provocation” by Ukraine intended to disrupt peace talks. The Kremlin’s foreign ministry said Russia was seeking a UN security council meeting on the matter. Russia denied responsibility for the Bucha killing of civilians. Its defence ministry described the photos and videos as “another staged performance by the Kyiv regime”, echoing a similar claim made after the bombing of a children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol.
Russia has repeatedly claimed, without proof, that Ukraine has staged such atrocities, but the Kremlin line is starkly contradicted by conditions on the ground and ample evidence of Russian attacks on civilian targets.
Kuleba urged the ICC and international organisations to come to the region to collect evidence of Russian war crimes.
Speaking on Times Radio on Sunday, he said Bucha was a “deliberate massacre”. Describing Russia as “worse than Isis”, he said Russian forces were guilty of murder, torture, rape and looting. He also urged G7 countries to impose “devastating” sanctions immediately.
Another senior Ukrainian official, Mykhailo Podolyak, who is leading Kyiv’s negotiating team in talks with the Russians, condemned the lack of western response as further horrific images emerged. “Today’s ‘leaders of Europe’, hundreds of current European politicians, [are] eating well and sleeping peacefully in their beds now, do you not want to look closely at this photo archive of hell arranged by Russians in the Kiev region?”
At a Brussels summit last week, the EU’s 27 leaders agreed to “move quickly with further coordinated robust sanctions” against Russia and its ally Belarus, but they have been divided about next steps.
Germany, whose industrial economy is heavily dependent on Russian gas, has resisted calls for an immediate ban on Russian fossil fuels, angering Poland and the Baltic states, which would like the most stringent measures against the Kremlin’s war machine.
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who cruised to victory in parliamentary elections on Sunday, has also faced criticism from Ukraine for his past support for Russia. Over the weekend, Zelenskiy renewed his attack on Orbán, saying he had failed to show moral leadership and lacked honesty. “He is virtually the only one in Europe to openly support Mr Putin,” Zelenskiy said.
On Saturday, Latvian authorities announced that all three Baltic states had stopped importing Russian gas since 1 April. Lithuania’s president, Gitanes Nausėda, said his country was no longer importing Russian gas. ”If we can do it, the rest of Europe can too,” he wrote on Twitter.
Nausėda said the “photo and video evidence from Irpin [and] Bucha unveil the brutal reality of horrific war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine”.
Russia’s actions in Bucha were consistent with more than a century of military practice, said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “Anyone saying that Bucha is the result of brutalisation or rogue behaviour is wrong. This was the plan. It was premeditated,” he wrote on Twitter. “And if the Russian military had been more successful there would have been many more towns like it.
“Now that the Ukrainians have pushed the Russians out of Kyiv… we are in this kind of dangerous inflection point, where the Russians have a more credible concept of operation,” he told the Guardian, referring to Russia’s decision to focus on southern Ukraine and the Donbas.
“The Russians could regroup and rebuild momentum and start taking ground again, but they are currently on the back foot and they are somewhat disorganised and morale is very low. If Ukrainians can capitalise on that they can potentially roll back the Russians.”
He added that the next couple of weeks “are a critical turning point in terms of whether the Ukrainians can keep the momentum”.
Western countries needed to prioritise military equipment, such as anti-tank weapons, air defence missiles and portable air defence systems that would allow Ukraine “to start attriting the Russian air defence systems command posts, electronic warfare systems, high-value targets”.
“Not all western countries have those systems and those that don’t should help resource those that do.”
The evidence of atrocities emerged against a backdrop of faltering peace negotiations. Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said talks on an agreement were not advanced enough to allow a meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin, contradicting a more optimistic statement from his Ukrainian opposite number, David Arakhamia. Ukraine has offered to relinquish its goal to join Nato, a key Russian demand, but the two sides have not agreed on the status of Russia-annexed Crimea and two self-declared republics in the Donbas.
Additional reporting by Aubrey Allegretti in London.
