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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Samantha Lock (now); Maanvi Singh, Gloria Oladipo, Léonie Chao-Fong and Martin Belam (earlier)

Zelenskiy says now is the ‘crucial moment’ for western leaders to impose further sanctions – as it happened

Volodymyr Zelenksyy Ukraine Bucha Russia United States Joe Biden United Kingdom Vladimir Putin Borodyanka Yoshimasa Hayashi

Thank you for joining us for today’s coverage of the war in Ukraine.

We have moved to a new liveblog available in the link below.

4,468 Russian war crimes including rape under investigation, prosecutor says

Ukrainian prosecutors say they are investigating 4,468 alleged Russian war crimes after the horror of recent atrocities committed in the Ukrainian town of Bucha came to light, prompting global revulsion and a raft of crippling new sanctions against Russia.

According to figures released by the prosecutors office, a total of 4,468 potential war crimes were listed as under investigation as of Tuesday with the figure growing by hundreds every day. An estimated 165 children have also died as a consequence of Russia’s invasion, the agency added.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova described the recently liberated towns surrounding Kyiv as a “tortured region from hell” and vowed to “punish the inhumans who set it up on our land” at a press briefing held from Bucha on Tuesday.

“Russia will be responsible for Bucha in The Hague,” she added in a statement published later in the day.

“Prosecutors and investigators are already examining the area [Kyiv region] and documenting crimes, so that every perpetrator of these atrocities are brought to justice both in national and international courts,” she said.

Ukraine’s prosecutors office has said pre-trial investigations have begun across the country, including in the regions of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Donetsk and Luhansk.

“We are collecting evidence for the national courts and the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Evidence is no longer just war crimes, but crimes against humanity. And we will prove every fact to punish those who tortured, mocked and destroyed Ukrainians,” Venediktova said.

Russian soldiers have committed sexual violence against Ukrainian women and men, children and elderly people,” she said in a seperate statement.

But the victims are silent about it. It’s their choice. And it’s clear: fear, pain, despair, total disbelief to all.”

Specifically, the prosecutor general referenced reported atrocities committed in Bucha.

“Bucha was released from the occupiers, but the consequences of their atrocities will have to be recovered for a long time: civilians were killed in the streets, cars were shot, torturers in basements,” she said.

Venediktova said prosecutors are currently investigating the “horrifying fact of torturing, killing and attempting burning of bodies of six civilians in Bucha,” she added to Twitter on Tuesday.

“The occupiers tried to burn the bodies of six tortured and killed civilians in Bucha,” she said, adding that prosecutors together with Kyiv Region police officers found a torture chamber in the town of Bucha in the basement of a children’s sanatorium.

Ukraine’s prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Tuesday:

During the occupation of the city of Bucha, soldiers of the Russian Federation armed forces, violating international humanitarian law standards, killed civilians and set fire to their bodies in order to hide the crime.

During the investigation, it was found that the bodies of the dead have traces of violent death and torture. The prosecutors of the Bucha district and Kyiv region prosecutor’s office work on the site together with police employees. Measures are being taken to determine all circumstances of the crime. The pre-trial investigation is underway.”

The Buchanian District Prosecutor’s Office has initiated criminal proceedings, the office confirmed.

In the basement of one of the children’s sanatoriums, law enforcement officers discovered the bodies of five men with their hands tied. Soldiers of the Russian Federation armed forces tortured unarmed civilians and then killed them.

Prosecutors and police officers work at the scene of the crime. All measures are taken to determine the circumstances of every war crime and person involved in the Russian aggression in order to bring them to justice.”

All over the Kyiv region, investigative and operative groups are investigating crime scenes across various districts, Venediktova said.

“More than 50 national police staff and prosecutors are now involved to conduct first-ever investigations in the territory of Buchansky district alone,” she said in a statement earlier this week.

Similar work is also reportedly being developed in all liberated towns in the Kyiv and Chernihiv region, with investigators collaborating with the local population to talk with witnesses, victims and gather photos and video evidence, Venediktova added,

“It takes time and a professional approach to record everything correctly and not lose any chance to find and punish the guilty,” she said.

Updated

European and international donors have agreed to extend 659.5 million euros in aid to Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, which is hosting more than 100,000 refugees from Ukraine at a time of soaring energy prices, Reuters reports.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said Germany would work to help Moldova free itself from its dependency on Russia for energy supplies while speaking after a donor conference she hosted in Berlin.

We agreed today to support Moldova with loans, budget support and other financial assistance worth 659.5 million euros.”

With fewer than 3 million people, Moldova has taken in more refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine per head than any other country.

Moldova relies exclusively on Russia’s Gazprom for gas imports. Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita asked donors at the conference, who included the EU and the French and Romanian foreign ministers, for support in diversifying her country’s energy supplies even as it deals with refugees in need.

“Since the beginning of the war, 400,000 refugees have crossed Moldova’s borders and 100,000 have decided to stay,” she said. “Almost half of them are children, these are vulnerable populations.”

Here is another view of a mass grave reportedly found next to a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine.

A mass grave reportedly found next to a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine.
A mass grave reportedly found next to a church in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine. Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP

US chipmaker Intel Corp said it has suspended business operations in Russia, joining a slew of companies to exit the country following its invasion of Ukraine.

The company, which had last month suspended shipments to customers in Russia and Belarus, said it has implemented business continuity measures to minimise disruption to its global operations.

“Intel continues to join the global community in condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine and calling for a swift return to peace,” the company said, Reuters reported.

International Business Machines Corp too had suspended shipments as Ukraine urged US cloud-computing and software companies to cut off business with Russia.

Servers from IBM, Dell Technologies Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co top the market in Russia, where companies and government agencies have relied on technology developed by the west as the basis for their owned-and-operated IT systems.

The United States and the European Union are set to impose additional sanctions on Russia on Wednesday, including Kremlin officials and their families.

Earlier, we reported that White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the US would ban new investment in Russia and place further sanctions on Russian financial institutions

The Wall Street Journal is also reporting that Washington is considering additional sanctions against Putin’s two daughters and Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank.

EU ambassadors will consider plans for a fifth package of sanctions, that includes banning imports of Russian coal, and preventing most Russian- owned or operated ships from using EU ports.

The United States will announce new sanctions on Russia’s Alfa Bank as soon as on Wednesday, a Wall Street Journal reporter tweeted.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy says now is the “crucial moment” for western leaders to impose further sanctions on Russia.

“After what the world saw in Bucha, sanctions against Russia must be commensurate with the gravity of the occupiers’ war crimes,” he said. “If after that Russian banks will still be able to function as usual... If after that the transit of goods to Russia will continue as usual... If after that the EU countries will pay for Russian energy resources as usual... Then the political fate of some leaders will develop not as usual.”

Watch the Ukrainian president’s most recent address below.

Around 5,000 Russian war crimes are currently under investigation in Ukraine, prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said at a briefing in Bucha on Tuesday.

“Even in such a cruel situation, war crimes are first on the spectrum, followed by crimes against humanity and genocide,” the Kyiv Independent cited Venediktova as saying.

“Prosecutors are directing investigation into horrifying fact of torturing, killing and attempting burning of bodies of 6 civilians in Bucha. The criminal case is initiated under Article 438 of the Criminal Code (Violations of the laws and customs of war)“ she added to Twitter on Tuesday.

“Under the direction of prosecutors, a pre-trial investigation is underway into violations of the laws and customs of war and violations of international humanitarian law. The occupiers tried to burn the bodies of six tortured and killed civilians in Bucha.”

Stark images from the Ukrainian town of Chernihiv, about 150km north-east of Kyiv, are the latest to emerge.

A man walks in front of a destroyed building in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
A man walks in front of a destroyed building in Chernihiv, Ukraine. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
A woman injured by shelling and her child in a hospital in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
A woman injured by shelling and her child in a hospital in Chernihiv, Ukraine. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Two people pick up debris from a bombed building in Chernihiv, Ukraine.
Two people pick up debris from a bombed building in Chernihiv, Ukraine. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Twitter to introduce new measures against Russian government accounts propaganda

Twitter has announced it is introducing new measures against Russian government accounts to reduce the impact of official propaganda on the social network.

The official accounts will no longer be “recommended” to Twitter users across all categories of the app, including in searches, the platform said in a statement.

The California company, like its rival Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, had already blocked the accounts of the Russian state-run media RT and Sputnik in the European Union.

Moscow responded by restricting access to Twitter in the country, and blocking Facebook and Instagram.

We will not amplify or recommend government accounts belonging to states that limit access to free information and are engaged in armed interstate conflict - whether Twitter is blocked in that country or not,” Twitter said in a statement.

When a government blocks or limits access to online services within their state, undercutting the public’s voice and ability to freely access information, but continues to use online services for their own communications, a severe information imbalance is created.”

Russian authorities have stepped up censorship to control the way in which the war is portrayed on television and in the press, but also by private individuals on social networks.

Using words such as “war” or “invasion” to describe the intervention or refer to actions against civilians is prohibited. The Russian government has instead labeled the conflict a “special military operation.”

In addition, the main independent media that still exist in Russia have been blocked or have suspended their work.

The New Zealand government also announced it will be introducing a 35% tariff on all imports from Russia and would extend existing export prohibitions to industrial products closely connected to strategic Russian industries.

“The images and reports emerging of atrocities committed against civilians in Bucha and other regions of Ukraine is abhorrent and reprehensible, and New Zealand continues to respond to Putin’s mindless acts of aggression,” foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta said in a statement.

She said the government expects to roll out further measures under the Russian Sanctions Act to support Ukraine. The new tariffs and sanctions will come into force from 25 April.

The United States will provide an additional $100 million in security assistance to Ukraine, including anti-armour systems, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

We will have more on this story as it develops.

The Czech Republic has also joined other nations in directly supplying Ukraine with offensive weapons, reportedly becoming the first EU country to do so since Russia invaded in February.

Senior Czech officials told the Reuters news agency that the country has sent Soviet made T-72 tanks and BVP-1 infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine, confirming local media reports that showed a train loaded with five tanks and five fighting vehicles.

Defence minister Jana Cernochova told parliament she would not confirm or deny details of Czech aid to Ukraine.

I will only assure you that the Czech Republic...is helping Ukraine as much as it can and will continue to help by (supplying) military equipment, both light and heavy.

I’m sorry, I can’t tell you more. War is raging there and we won’t make anything easy for the Z-killers! Believe me, we’re sending essential military material to Ukrainian friends. And we will continue to do so,” she added.

It comes amid reports that the German government earlier this week lifted objections to a private Czech arms dealer exporting 56 ex-East German troop carriers to Ukraine.

The United States is providing Ukraine with life-saving protective equipment that could be deployed if Russia were to use chemical and biological weapons, a Biden administration official said on Tuesday.

The equipment and supplies, which were requested by Kyiv, are being delivered on a rolling basis and some has already been delivered, the official said, as reported by Reuters.

Interim summary

  • Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy gave the UN security council a harrowing account of atrocities in his country and demanded that Russian leaders “be brought to justice for war crimes”. The Ukrainian president called for an international tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after the second world war, speaking of Russian forces: “There is not a single crime that they would not commit there.”
  • Atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha is “only one of many examples of what the occupiers have been doing on our land for the past 41 days” Zelenskiy said, adding that there were many more that the world had yet to learn the full truth about. “Russia wants to turn Ukraine into silent slaves,” he said.
  • The Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said between 150 and 300 bodies may be in a mass grave by a church in the town of Bucha. She did not say how the authorities had reached the estimate of the number of victims in the mass grave.
  • Satellite imagery of one Bucha street published by Maxar Technologies from 19 and 21 March appears to show several bodies in exactly the same position as in video footage and photos taken this weekend in the same street. A New York Times analysis of closeups of Bucha’s Yablonska Street concluded, after comparing them with video footage from 1 and 2 April, that many corpses had been there since at least three weeks ago, when Russian forces were in control of the town. The UK’s ministry of defence said 8 bodies had lay on the street for at least ten days before the town was reclaimed from Russian forces.
  • Displaced residents of Bucha should not yet return to their homes because there are still mines in the area after Russian troops withdrew from the devastated Ukrainian town, its mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk, said. Fedoruk said about 3,700 civilians had stayed in Bucha, which had a pre-war population of about 37,000, throughout the occupation by Russian troops.
  • India’s permanent representative to the UN, TS Tirumurti, condemned the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and called for an independent investigation. Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, also strongly condemned Russia’s “war crimes” in Ukraine in a statement intensifying Israel’s criticism of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.
  • The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the evidence from Bucha shows “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities” by Russian forces. “The reports are more than credible. The evidence is there for the world to see,” he told reporters.
  • The Kremlin responding by saying allegations that Russian forces committed war crimes by executing civilians in Bucha were a “monstrous forgery” aimed at “denigrating” the Russian army. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters that remarks by Joe Biden yesterday calling for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes were unacceptable and unworthy of a US leader.
  • The US and its allies are planning more sanctions on Russia with the objective to “deplete the resources that Putin has to continue his war against Ukraine,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. The new penalties will include a ban on all new investment in Russia and greater sanctions on its financial institutions and state-owned enterprises. Separately, the US Treasury Department moved to block any Russian government debt payments with US dollars from accounts at US financial institutions, making it harder for Russia to meet its financial obligations.
  • US Army Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States should look at the development of more bases in eastern Europe to protect against Russian aggression, but rotate forces through them rather than make permanent deployments. Milley suggested the conflict would extend beyond Ukraine and continue for “at least” years. “I do think this is a very protracted conflict and I think it’s at least measured in years. I don’t know about decades, but at least years for sure,” he told Congress on Tuesday.
  • Almost two hundred Russian diplomatic staff have been expelled from European countries this week in a direct expression of governments’ outrage at the killings of Ukrainian civilians revealed as Moscow’s military forces left. In what amounts to one of the biggest diplomatic breakdowns of recent years, 206 Russian diplomats and embassy staff have been told since Monday they are no longer welcome to stay by governments in Italy, France, Germany and elsewhere.
  • British prime minister Boris Johnson has urged Russian citizens not to fall for Vladimir Putin’s propaganda, and to circumvent tough internet censorship rules by installing technology to discover the full extent of war crimes committed during the invasion of Ukraine.
  • The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the EU is proposing new sanctions against Russia, including an import ban on coal worth €4bn (£3.3bn) per year. The package will also include a full transaction ban on four key Russian banks, a ban on Russian vessels and Russian-operated vessels accessing EU ports, as well as targeted export and import bans.
  • The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Nato and G7 foreign ministers meeting on Wednesday and Thursday will discuss the delivery of advanced weapons to Ukraine. Ammunition, medical supplies and “high-end” weapons systems would also be discussed, he added.
  • Zelenskiy questioned the ability of the UN Security Council to provide security, undermining the very functions for which it was created. “The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world doesn’t. For anyone. This definitely means that the United Nations is currently unable to carry out the functions for which it was created. And only one state is to blame for this - Russia, which discredits the UN and all other international institutions where it still participates,” he said in a nightly national address.
  • Zelenskiy said it is necessary to ensure his nation is able to defend itself from Russia in the years ahead and spoke of the importance of concrete security guarantees. “Even if we sign the most powerful agreement, we understand that in two years Russia may return. And if you and I accept this, then we act accordingly,” he said in an interview with Ukrainian media on Tuesday. “If we are offered to join Nato tomorrow, if they don’t play with our lives again, but seriously offer, we will join,” he added.
A resident looks for belongings in an apartment building destroyed in Borodyanka, Ukraine.
A resident looks for belongings in an apartment building destroyed in Borodyanka, Ukraine. Photograph: Vadim Ghirdă/AP

Agreement on Donbas and Crimea 'impossible' in negotiation process, Zelenskiy says

Zelenskiy added that he believes that the issue of the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas and Crimea should not be tied to the negotiation process with Russia to end the war and withdraw Russian troops from Ukraine.

Resolving all issues in a package and ending the war with Russia is “difficult and unlikely”, the Ukrainian president added, according to a statement issued by his office.

“Especially when there are tanks on our territory, rockets hit our cities, when there are difficult situations in blocked cities, such as Mariupol,” Zelenskiy added.

Russia has its own vision of Donbas, and Ukraine has its own. So I had a simple suggestion. I believe that we will not be able to agree on all points at once. This is impossible, even if we have negotiations.”

Zelenskiy noted that there is indeed a concentration of Russian troops in Donbas, and Ukraine is well aware of the goal and possible plans of the Russian Federation.

“Donbas, and the south of Ukraine, and the corridor to Crimea, and the Kherson region, and the Zaporizhzhia region... We basically understand what they are doing. In order for them to succeed, they will fight for Donbas. And Mariupol is a life for us, a city, and for them it is a ‘medal’ that they want to hang on their chests,” he said.

Zelenskiy also rejected the possibility of returning occupied Crimea by force, explaining that Ukraine’s proposals in negotiations with Russia on Crimea do not mean that the topic of de-occupation of the peninsula will not be raised for 10-15 years.

“On the contrary, according to him, the agreement should stipulate that during this period the parties must resolve the issue of Crimea through diplomacy,” the statement read. “The proposed format is not to solve it now, but to solve it at least tomorrow, during this period.”

In an interview with Ukrainian media, president Zelenskiy said it is necessary to ensure his nation is able to defend itself from Russia in the years ahead and spoke of the importance of concrete security guarantees.

Even if we sign the most powerful agreement, we understand that in two years Russia may return. And if you and I accept this, then we act accordingly,” he said.

Referring to concrete security guarantees, Zelenskiy said everything would depend on the guarantor countries to ensure implementation.

All this is being discussed at the level of advisers and leaders with France, the United States, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Israel, and there are many friends who want to join. So far, we have not received a specific list of guarantees and a list of countries that are ready to join us 100%.

We do not need to have 40 countries of the world that are ready to join and fight for Ukraine under the agreement. We need serious players who are ready for anything. We need a circle of states that are ready to provide any weapons within 24 hours. We need individual countries on which sanctions policy really depends, so that these sanctions are deeply elaborated in advance. So that in the first second when we feel the threat from the Russian Federation, these states will unite and within three days introduce everything at once, block everything.”

Speaking of Nato, he added:

If we are offered to join Nato tomorrow, if they don’t play with our lives again, but seriously offer, we will join. But this will not happen, unfortunately, and did not happen.

That is why we will build those security guarantees that can protect us, protect people’s lives.”

We cannot talk about sSwitzerland of the future’ - probably, our state will be able to be like this a long time after. But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.

We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons. I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”

Updated

The World Health Organization has said it will supply thousands of doses of life-saving antiretroviral drugs to Ukraine to cover the needs of HIV patients in the country for the next 12 months.

WHO, along with the United States President’s emergency plan for AIDS relief (PEPFAR), Ukrainian authorities and other partners, has procured 209,000 packs of generic antiretroviral drug TLD.

Ukraine has an estimated 260,000 people living with HIV, the second largest number in Europe after Russia, and prior to Moscow’s invasion around half of them were on antiretroviral treatment.

Last month, the UN agency for HIV/AIDS warned that Ukraine was left with less than a month’s supply of drugs for HIV patients.

“This war has the potential to undermine the hard-earned progress of recent years on a number of health issues, including HIV. We could not let that happen when Ukraine had begun to turn a corner on HIV,” WHO regional director for Europe Hans Henri Kluge said.

Zelenskiy also questioned the ability of the UN Security Council to provide security, undermining the very functions for which it was created.

The UN Security Council exists, and security in the world doesn’t. For anyone.

This definitely means that the United Nations is currently unable to carry out the functions for which it was created. And only one state is to blame for this - Russia, which discredits the UN and all other international institutions where it still participates.

Well, not exactly participates... Tries to block everything constructive and use global architecture in order to spread lies and justify the evil it does.

I’m sure the world sees it. I hope the world will draw conclusions. Otherwise there will be only one institution left in the world to guarantee the security of states. Namely - weapons.

Zelenskiy said he suggested hosting a global conference in Kyiv to “determine how the world’s architecture can be reformed” given all the actions of Russia.

The Ukrainian president also described another day of “active diplomatic work” where he addressed the UN Security Council, the Spanish Parliament and spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron, adding that France would help provide technical support in the investigation of the Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

He added that Ukraine is preparing to welcome President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell in Kyiv in the near future.

“We are preparing a new package of powerful sanctions against Russia for everything it has done to our people,” he added.

Updated

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the current state of play of war in his country as a “crucial moment” for western leaders in his latest late-night national address.

Working together in Kyiv is something that will be praised by many nations of the world. And not only in Europe.

Because now Kyiv is the capital of global democracy, the capital of the struggle for freedom for all on the European continent.

Now is a crucial moment, especially for western leaders. And this is no longer about how our people will evaluate the new sanctions and what I will say about them. This is about how decisions on sanctions will be assessed in western societies themselves.”

Referencing the atrocities now coming to light in Bucha, Zelenskiy said sanctions against Russia “must be commensurate with the gravity of the occupiers’ war crimes”.

If after that Russian banks will still be able to function as usual... If after that the transit of goods to Russia will continue as usual... If after that the EU countries will pay for Russian energy resources as usual... Then the political fate of some leaders will develop not as usual. My advice to everyone: feel now that the moment is really crucial.”

Zelenskiy addressed the UN Security Council earlier on Tuesday.
Zelenskiy addressed the UN Security Council earlier on Tuesday. Photograph: EyePress News/REX/Shutterstock

In the video below, residents of the northern Ukrainian town of Borodyanka expressed anger and despair on Tuesday after finding their homes reduced to rubble, days after the town was retaken from Russian forces by Ukraine’s army.

Since Russian troops withdrew from towns and villages around the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Ukrainian troops have been showing journalists corpses of what they say are civilians killed by Russian forces and destroyed houses and burnt-out cars.

Bodies of Ukrainian civilians lay on street in Bucha for 10 days, UK defence says

The bodies of Ukrainian civilians lay on a street in Bucha for at least ten days before the town was reclaimed from Russian forces, the UK’s ministry of defence has said.

Citing an analysis of satellite imagery dated 21 March 2022, the ministry said at least 8 bodies were identified lying in a street in Bucha, about 30km north-west of the capital Kyiv.

Bucha was occupied by the Russian armed forces until 31 March 2022.

Separately, a New York Times analysis of closeups of Bucha’s Yablonska Street concluded, after comparing them with video footage from 1 and 2 April, that many corpses had been there since at least three weeks ago, when Russian forces were in control of the town.

Zelenskiy visited the town of Bucha on Monday after officials said the bodies of 410 civilians had been recovered from Kyiv-area towns after Russian troops withdrew.

The president also spoke of civilians “shot and killed in the back of the head after being tortured. Some of them were shot on the streets; others were thrown into the wells. So they died there in suffering.”

He added: “Civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road just for their pleasure.”

The president detailed the alleged brutality of the Russian forces. “They cut off limbs, slashed their throats, women were raped and killed in front of their children. Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear.”

Images of the corpses of what appear to be civilians shot at close range in the streets of Bucha have prompted international condemnation of Moscow, calls for yet harsher sanctions and demands that those responsible be tried for war crimes.

Updated

Conflict in Ukraine to continue for years 'at least', US military chief says

Army Gen Mark Milley also agreed that Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, and its ongoing demands that the US and Nato reduce troops and arms in European countries along Russia’s borders, signal a lengthy conflict in the region that extends beyond Ukraine.

I do think this is a very protracted conflict and I think it’s at least measured in years. I don’t know about decades, but at least years for sure,” said Milley.

I think that Nato, the United States, Ukraine and all of the allies and partners that are supporting Ukraine are going to be involved in this for quite some time.”

Austin added that the broad Russian demands were not acceptable to Nato, and the US is looking at ways to provide additional aid and training to countries, including non-Nato allies such as Georgia and Finland, the Associated Press reports.

Members of Congress pressed Austin and Milley on what could have stopped Russia from invading Ukraine, and that sanctions did not work as a deterrent.

Both said that the only possible way to deter Russia may have been to put US troops on the ground inside Ukraine, but that option was rejected because it risked a broader US war with Russia.

Milley said he isn’t sure Russian President Vladimir Putin was deterrable since invading Ukraine has been a long-term goal for Moscow.

Updated

The United States should look at the development of more bases in eastern Europe to protect against Russian aggression, but rotate forces through them rather than make permanent deployments, a top US military officer told Congress on Tuesday.

Army Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the basing could be funded by other countries such as Poland and the Baltics, however, defense secretary Lloyd Austin said any effort to expand security in eastern Europe is a “work in progress” that probably will be discussed at the Nato summit in June.

Speaking about the need to reallocate forces to Europe’s eastern flank, where Nato allies are worried that they may be Russia’s next target, Milley said:

My advice would be to create permanent bases but don’t permanently station (forces), so you get the effect of permanence by rotational forces cycling through permanent bases.

I believe that a lot of our European allies, especially those such as the Baltics or Poland and Romania, and elsewhere – they’re very, very willing to establish permanent bases. They’ll build them, they’ll pay for them.”

Austin added that he recently visited and spoke with leaders in the Baltics, noting that they made it clear they value US troops there. “We’ll continue to work with Nato to assess what the requirements will be moving forward,” Austin said. “We will be part of that solution.”

The Pentagon is continuing to review its troop numbers across Europe, and whether to add more or shift some of those already there to other locations. Milley said that while there are no decisions yet, there’s a possibility, if not a probability of increasing US troops in Europe, and that need could be filled by rotational forces.

  • I’m Samantha Lock and I’ll be bringing you all the latest lines from Ukraine for the rest of the day.

Updated

Catch up

  • Volodymyr Zelenskiy has given the UN security council a harrowing account of atrocities in his country and demanded that Russian leaders “be brought to justice for war crimes”. The Ukrainian president called for an international tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after the second world war, speaking of Russian forces: “There is not a single crime that they would not commit there.”
  • The Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said between 150 and 300 bodies may be in a mass grave by a church in the town of Bucha. She did not say how the authorities had reached the estimate of the number of victims in the mass grave.
  • Displaced residents of Bucha should not yet return to their homes because there are still mines in the area after Russian troops withdrew from the devastated Ukrainian town, its mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk, said. Fedoruk said about 3,700 civilians had stayed in Bucha, which had a pre-war population of about 37,000, throughout the occupation by Russian troops.
  • India’s permanent representative to the UN, TS Tirumurti, condemned the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and called for an independent investigation. Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, also strongly condemned Russia’s “war crimes” in Ukraine in a statement intensifying Israel’s criticism of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.
  • The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the evidence from Bucha shows “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities” by Russian forces. “The reports are more than credible. The evidence is there for the world to see,” he told reporters.
  • The US and its allies are planning more sanctions on Russia, following the reports of atrocities. “The biggest part of our objective here is to deplete the resources that Putin has to continue his war against Ukraine,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
  • Almost two hundred Russian diplomatic staff have been expelled from European countries this week in a direct expression of governments’ outrage at the killings of Ukrainian civilians revealed as Moscow’s military forces left. In what amounts to one of the biggest diplomatic breakdowns of recent years, 206 Russian diplomats and embassy staff have been told since Monday they are no longer welcome to stay by governments in Italy, France, Germany and elsewhere.
  • The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the EU is proposing new sanctions against Russia, including an import ban on coal worth €4bn (£3.3bn) per year. The package will also include a full transaction ban on four key Russian banks, a ban on Russian vessels and Russian-operated vessels accessing EU ports, as well as targeted export and import bans.
  • The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Nato and G7 foreign ministers meeting on Wednesday and Thursday will discuss the delivery of advanced weapons to Ukraine. Ammunition, medical supplies and “high-end” weapons systems would also be discussed, he added.

– Léonie Chao-Fong, Guardian staff

Updated

The US and its allies are planning more sanctions on Russia.

The AP reports:

The new penalties will include a ban on all new investment in Russia.

Among the other measures being taken against Russia are greater sanctions on its financial institutions and state-owned enterprises, and sanctions on government officials and their family members, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki. “The goal is to force them to make a choice,” she said. “The biggest part of our objective here is to deplete the resources that Putin has to continue his war against Ukraine.”

Separately, the Treasury Department moved Tuesday to block any Russian government debt payments with U.S. dollars from accounts at U.S. financial institutions, making it harder for Russia to meet its financial obligations.

President Joe Biden and U.S. allies have worked together to levy a crippling of economic penalties against Russia for invading Ukraine more than a month ago, including the freezing of central bank assets, export controls and the seizing of property, including yachts, that belong to Russia’s wealthy elite. But calls for increased sanctions intensified this week in response to the attacks, killings and destruction in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

The sanctions are intended to further Russia’s economic, financial and technological “isolation” from the rest of the world as a penalty for its attacks on civilians in Ukraine, Psaki said. That isolation is a key aspect of the U.S. strategy, which is premised on the idea that Russia will ultimately lack the resources and equipment to keep fighting a prolonged war in Ukraine.

Psaki said the administration is assessing “additional consequences and steps we can put in place” but underscored that Biden is not weighing any military action.

An increasingly desperate Russia has engaged in military tactics that have outraged much of the wider global community, leading to charges that it is committing war crimes and causing other sanctions.

Still, almost all of the EU has refrained from an outright ban on Russian oil and natural gas that would likely crush the Russian economy. The U.S. has banned fossil fuels from Russia, while Lithuania blocked natural gas from that country on Saturday, becoming the first of the 27-member EU to do so. The EU executive branch on Tuesday proposed a ban on Russian coal, while Germany’s government intends to end its use of Russian natural gas over the next two years.

Russia’s war in Ukraine: complete guide in maps, video and pictures

Where is fighting happening and how did we get here?

Andrew Roth, Dan Sabbagh, Paul Scruton, Harvey Symons, Finbarr Sheehy, Glenn Swann and Niels de Hoog report:

'I couldn’t keep it inside': ballet star Olga Smirnova on quitting the Bolshoi

“My life totally changed in one day,” says Olga Smirnova. “In the morning, I did not know I was going to leave Russia. And in the night, I was sitting on the plane.” The 30-year-old dancer was one of the Bolshoi Ballet’s star ballerinas, a universally lauded performer at the peak of her powers, at a company that has long had close ties to the Kremlin. Earlier this month, she made a shock announcement: she had joined Dutch National Ballet (DNB), leaving Moscow behind. The move came shortly after Smirnova wrote a heartfelt post on the online messaging service Telegram about Russia’s attack on Ukraine. “With all the fibres of my soul I am against the war,” she wrote. “I never thought that I would be ashamed of Russia … But now the line is drawn on the before and after.”

Speaking via video call from Amsterdam, she explains her reason for leaving: “It did not feel safe.” Although there had been no direct threat from the authorities, she adds: “I just felt the atmosphere was tense in the country. International flights were being cancelled and there were rumours the borders would be closed, so we decided to leave. We didn’t want to risk it and wait longer.”

She knew making such a statement would put her in the spotlight. Why did she do it? “I don’t know,” she says. “I just felt I needed to speak out. I couldn’t keep it inside. There were many artists who spoke out. I admire Russian literature. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are my favourite writers and you learn from their example that you must speak honestly and openly.”

Smirnova barely heard from her Bolshoi colleagues, save for a couple of “supportive and touching” messages. “People are afraid to speak out. If they don’t have any choice but to stay, they prefer not to speak out. Everyone should be able to decide what type of society they want to live in and how much freedom one needs for living.”

Read more:

Updated

A record number of Ukrainians want Ukraine to be a member of the European Union according to a new poll, reports Reuters.

The number of Ukrainians who want their country to join the European Union rose to a record high of 91% by the end of March but support for joining Nato fell, a poll by the Rating research agency showed on Tuesday.

Support for EU membership mostly has hovered around 60% for the past three years but started climbing steeply after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, according to Rating, one of Ukraine’s main independent pollsters.

The invasion – the biggest assault on a European state since the second world war – spurred Ukraine to apply for fast-track EU membership, and EU countries have implemented sweeping sanctions on Russia and welcomed refugees fleeing the war.

Read the full article here (paywall).

Updated

Here is the video message from earlier today of UK prime minister Boris Johnson pleading with Russian forces to share reports of “atrocities” their troops are committing in Ukraine.

Updated

The Russian army said today that it shot down two Ukrainian helicopters evacuating nationalist battalion leaders from Mariupol, reports AFP.

The Russian army said Tuesday it had shot down two Ukrainian helicopters trying to evacuate the leaders of a nationalist battalion defending the embattled port of Mariupol.

“This morning, April 5, around Mariupol, a new attempt by the Kyiv regime to evacuate leaders of the nationalist Azov battalion was aborted. Two Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters, trying to reach the city from the sea, were shot down by portable anti-aircraft systems,” defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.

He said Moscow had on Tuesday morning proposed that Ukrainian fighters lay down their arms and leave the city “via an agreed route” to territory under Kyiv’s control.

He said the Ukrainian army had “ignored” the proposal.

“Since Kyiv is not interested in saving the lives of its soldiers, Mariupol will be freed from nationalists,” said Konashenkov.

Last week, he said the Russian army had shot down a Ukrainian helicopter over the Sea of Azov that had come to evacuate commanders of the Azov battalion, which has been fiercely defending Mariupol for weeks.

Sergei Lavrov – war graves 'a provocation'

Russia foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said today that mass graves discovered in Bucha were a “provocation” meant to stall peacekeeping talks between Russia and Ukraine, reported AFP.

In a video message broadcast on Russian television, Lavrov said:

A question arises: What purpose does this blatantly untruthful provocation serve? We are led to believe it is to find a pretext to torpedo the ongoing negotiations.

Lavrov added that the situation in Bucha, which many are calling evidence of war crimes committed by Russia, are meant to “distract attention from the negotiation process, distract attention from the fact that the Ukrainian party, after Istanbul, has started to row back, tried to put forward new conditions”.

Talks between Russia and Ukraine have continued after the top diplomats from the two countries met last month in Turkey.

Updated

3,846 people have been evacuated from Ukrainian cities through humanitarian corridors today, reports Reuters.

In an online post, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said that 3,846 have been evacuated, up from 3,376 who were evacuated yesterday.

Fresh allegations of atrocities by occupying troops have emerged as a Ukrainian man described three days and nights of torture, mock executions and the disappearance of fellow prisoners during his captivity by Russian forces in the town of Borodyanka.

Petro Titenko, 45, told the Guardian of his three nights of hell at the hands of Russian and Chechen soldiers after he was picked up for breaking curfew, during which he was beaten, forced to kneel in what he was told was his grave and had bullets shot at his head and feet.

Titenko, his wife, Yulia, and his 21-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter had been forced to move from central Borodyanka to Druzhnya, on the town’s outskirts, on 26 February after a shell blew away the roof of their home. But their hell was yet to truly begin, they said.

In Druzhnya, the couple hunkered down day and night in their cellar, aware, they said, that any civilians outside were being killed. But on the evening of 18 March Titenko decided to try to slip out after curfew to check on his brother less than three miles away.

Halfway there, at about 6.30pm, three Russian soldiers armed with machine guns emerged from the woods and accused him of giving Russian locations away to the Ukrainian army. He was searched, his hands were tied behind his back and a sack was roughly put over his head.

Read Daniel Boffey’s full article here: “Ukrainian man tells of days of torture at hands of occupying troops”

Animals at the Kharkiv Feldman zoo are being evacuated following earlier reports that some would have to be euthanized due to transport issues associated with Russian shelling.

Earlier today, Alexander Feldman, owner of the zoo, said that large animals at the Kharkiv Feldman zoo, located in the city of Lisne, would have to be put down as their cages were destroyed from shelling.

Dnipro deputy mayor Mykhailo Lysenko later confirmed that the animals would be evacuated instead, reported BBC reporter Myroslava Petsa.

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, is calling on Russian forces to share reports about “atrocities” committed by their troops in Ukraine, reports Reuters.

In a video message, Johnson appealed to Russian troops to share stories about what was being done in Ukraine, specifically talking about atrocities in Bucha, Irpin and other parts of the country.

Johnson said:

The atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha, Irpin and elsewhere in Ukraine have horrified the world … The reports are so shocking, so sickening, it’s no wonder your government is seeking to hide them from you … Your president knows that if you could see what was happening, you would not support his war.

Johnson, who also encouraged Russians to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access independent information on the war, added:

And when you find the truth, share it. Those responsible will be held to account. And history will remember who looked the other way … [in Russia] Your president stands accused of committing war crimes. But I cannot believe he’s acting in your name.

Updated

The US treasury department imposed sanctions today on a Russia-based darknet market and a cryptocurrency exchange, reports Reuters.

The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Tuesday on a Russia-based darknet market site and a cryptocurrency exchange that it said operates primarily out of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The sanctions against Russia-Based Hydra and currency exchange Garantex, published on the Treasury Department’s website, “send a message today to criminals that you cannot hide on the darknet or their forums, and you cannot hide in Russia or anywhere else in the world,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

The deputy prime minister of Ukraine said today that an International Red Cross (ICRC) convoy is still not able to reach the city of Mariupol after being blocked yesterday, reports Reuters.

Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed that the convoy has still not been able to reach the besieged city.

Vereshchuk added that people currently in Mariupol are still only able to leave by foot or car as larger efforts to evacuate civilians have failed.

Yesterday, Vereshchuk reported that Russian forces were blocking an evacuation convoy being escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the eastern town of Manhush.

A ICRC spokesperson confirmed Vereshchuk’s account, adding that it was not a hostage situation.

Updated

The governor of the city of Zaporizhzhia said today that up to 20 people have died in some villages currently under Russian occupation, reported Reuters.

Speaking on national television, governor Oleksandr Starukh said:

You had a village of 120 people – 15, 17, 20 people died. If you compare that proportionally to Bucha, it’s the same loss, maybe even more.

Starukh was referring to civilian killings in the town of Bucha, with many calling the atrocities evidence of war crimes.

Starukh did not name specific villages or provide evidence of more civilian killings.

Updated

Catch up

It is 9pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand now:

  • Volodymyr Zelenskiy has given the UN security council a harrowing account of atrocities in his country and demanded that Russian leaders “be brought to justice for war crimes”. The Ukrainian president called for an international tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after the second world war, speaking of Russian forces: “There is not a single crime that they would not commit there.”
  • Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said between 150 and 300 bodies may be in a mass grave by a church in the town of Bucha. She did not say how the authorities had reached the estimate of the number of victims in the mass grave.
  • Displaced residents of Bucha should not yet return to their homes because there are still mines in the area after Russian troops withdrew from the devastated Ukrainian town, its mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk, said. Fedoruk said about 3,700 civilians had stayed in Bucha, which had a pre-war population of about 37,000, throughout the occupation by Russian troops.
  • India’s permanent representative to the UN, T.S. Tirumurti, condemned the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and called for an independent investigation. Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, also strongly condemned Russia’s “war crimes” in Ukraine in a statement intensifying Israel’s criticism of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.
  • The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the evidence from Bucha shows “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities” by Russian forces. “The reports are more than credible. The evidence is there for the world to see,” he told reporters.
  • Almost two hundred Russian diplomatic staff have been expelled from European countries this week in a direct expression of governments’ outrage at the killings of Ukrainian civilians revealed as Moscow’s military forces left. In what amounts to one of the biggest diplomatic breakdowns of recent years, 206 Russian diplomats and embassy staff have been told since Monday they are no longer welcome to stay by governments in Italy, France, Germany and elsewhere.
  • The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the EU is proposing new sanctions against Russia, including an import ban on coal worth €4bn (£3.3bn) per year. The package will also include a full transaction ban on four key Russian banks, a ban on Russian vessels and Russian-operated vessels from accessing EU ports, as well as targeted export and import bans.
  • The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Nato and G7 foreign ministers meeting on Wednesday and Thursday will discuss the delivery of advanced weapons to Ukraine. Ammunition, medical supplies and “high-end” weapons systems would also be discussed, he added.

That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, today. I will now hand the blog to my colleague, Gloria Oladipo. Thank you for reading.

Updated

The US and its allies will impose a new round of sweeping Russia-related sanctions tomorrow, a source familiar with the planned announcement told Reuters.

The package will include a ban on all new investments in Russia, an increase of curbs on financial institutions and state-owned enterprises in Russia, and targeting Russian government officials and their families, according to the source.

The sanctions will “impose significant costs on Russia and send it further down the road of economic, financial, and technological isolation”, the source said.

They aim to “degrade key instruments of Russian state power, impose acute and immediate economic harm on Russia, and hold accountable the Russian kleptocracy that funds and supports Putin’s war”, the source said.

Updated

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has urged the Russian people to “look at what is being done in your name”.

In a video message directed to the Russian population, he said:

Your president knows that if you could see what was happening, you would not support his war.

He knows that these crimes betray the trust of every Russian mother who proudly waves goodbye to her son as he heads off to join the military. And he knows they are a stain on the honour of Russia itself.

Speaking in Russian, he added:

Your president stands accused of committing war crimes. But I cannot believe he’s acting in your name.

Satellite images showing bodies strewn across the streets of Bucha have provided a rebuttal to claims by the Russian state that Ukrainian forces placed dead people in the town in “staged provocation” after Russian forces had already withdrawn.

The corpses’ positions on the photos, taken in mid-March, match those from smartphone pictures published in early April, allowing the massacre to be precisely dated to before Russian forces evacuated the town.

The analysis of the images, published by the New York Times, is the latest example of the growing importance of satellite imagery to reporters, researchers and activists seeking to document the progression of the war in Ukraine and gather evidence of war crimes in the region.

Along with cheap and accessible drone footage, the technology has revolutionised the practice of “open-source intelligence”, or OSINT, says Eliot Higgins, founder of OSINT journalism group Bellingcat.

India ‘unequivocally condemns’ civilian killings in Bucha

India’s permanent representative to the UN, T.S. Tirumurti, has condemned the killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha and called for an independent investigation.

Speaking at a meeting of the UN security council in New York, Tirumurti said:

Recent reports of civilian killings in Bucha are deeply disturbing.

We unequivocally condemn these killings and support the call for an independent investigation.

Tirumurti delivered his speech shortly after the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, spoke with India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Reuters reports.

The US has repeatedly urged India to condemn Russia’s aggression since it invaded Ukraine, but India has so far abstained from successive UN resolutions censuring Moscow, calling only for an end to violence, and has increased its oil purchases from Russia, its biggest supplier of arms.

A team from Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) witnessed bombings during a hospital visit on Monday in the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv, the charity said in a statement.

Michel-Olivier Lacharité, MSF head of mission in Ukraine, said:

Several explosions took place in close proximity to our staff over the course of about 10 minutes. As they were leaving the area, the MSF team saw injured people and at least one dead body. However, we are not in a position to give exact numbers of dead and injured.

Fortunately our staff were able to take cover and were not hurt in the explosions, although the windows of their vehicle, parked outside the hospital entrance, were blown out by the blasts.

The neighbourhood where the oncology hospital is located in a residential area in the east of Mykolaiv, where many medical facilities are concentrated, MSF said.

Lacharité added:

Bombing such a large area within a residential neighbourhood in the middle of the afternoon cannot but cause civilian casualties and hit public buildings.

China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zhang Jun, said the reports and images showing civilian deaths in Bucha are “very disturbing”, but added that the circumstances should be verified and any accusations should be based on facts.

Speaking at the UN security council meeting in New York, he repeated Beijing’s stance that sanctions are not effective in solving the Ukraine crisis but that they instead the economic spillover.

He also called on the US, Nato and the EU to engage in a dialogue with Russia, Reuters reports.

Up to 300 bodies may be in Bucha mass grave, Ukraine’s ombudswoman says

Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said between 150 and 300 bodies may be in a mass grave by a church in the town of Bucha.

Denisova said in an online post:

Currently, the bodies of the dead are being collected by law enforcement officers to conduct the necessary examinations.

An overview of Bucha with the church of St. Andrew at centre and the site of a mass grave just above that.
An overview of Bucha with the church of St. Andrew at centre and the site of a mass grave just above that. Photograph: AP

She did not say how the authorities had reached the estimate of the number of victims in the mass grave, Reuters reports.

A resident looks for belongings in the ruins of an apartment building destroyed in Borodyanka, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
A resident looks for belongings in the ruins of an apartment building destroyed in Borodyanka, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Photograph: Vadim Ghirdă/AP
People walk by an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
People walk by an apartment building destroyed during fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in Borodyanka, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. Photograph: Vadim Ghirdă/AP

My colleague Shaun Walker writes for us after a two-day visit to the Ukrainian town of Trostianets, where he found evidence of summary executions, torture and systematic looting during the month of occupation by Russian troops.

The tanks rolled into Trostianets, a sleepy town 20 miles from the Russia-Ukraine border, in the first hours of the invasion. Russian troops fanned out across the town, occupying a number of buildings: the forestry agency headquarters, the railway station and a chocolate factory.

Their top general set up his office in room 23 at the local administration building, where the council’s accountants used to sit. His bottle of single malt is still on the desk, the butts of his slim cigarettes perched on the edge of an ashtray. He slept on a single bed stolen from a nearby hotel.

His men lived one floor below. They appear to have slept, eaten and defecated in the same rooms, and some of them may have died there too, judging by the bloodied Russian uniforms littering the floor.

Thirty days after they arrived, amid a fierce Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russians left Trostianets in a convoy of tanks, other armour, trucks full of loot and numerous stolen vehicles they had daubed with Z signs, the symbol of their invading force.

The carnage they left behind will be remembered by the residents of this quaint, historical spa town of 20,000 residents for the rest of their lives, and is yet another indictment of the results of Russia’s unwanted “liberation” mission in Ukraine.

In the square outside the train station, there is now a grim panorama of several mangled tanks, the whitened carcass of a self-propelled howitzer and a shot-up yellow bus with blood smeared on the seats. Hundreds of green ammunition boxes and casings remain, evidence of the shells and Grad missiles the Russians fired from Trostianets into neighbouring towns. Surviving buildings have been daubed with pro-Russian slogans, and crude insults about the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Updated

Summary

It is just past 7.30pm in Kyiv. Here’s where we stand now:

  • Volodymyr Zelenskiy has given the UN security council a harrowing account of atrocities in his country and demanded that Russian leaders “be brought to justice for war crimes”. The Ukrainian president called for an international tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after the second world war, speaking of Russian forces: “There is not a single crime that they would not commit there.”
  • Displaced residents of Bucha should not yet return to their homes because there are still mines in the area after Russian troops withdrew from the devastated Ukrainian town, its mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk, said. Fedoruk said about 3,700 civilians had stayed in Bucha, which had a pre-war population of about 37,000, throughout the occupation by Russian troops.
  • Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, has strongly condemned Russia’s “war crimes” in Ukraine in a statement intensifying Israel’s criticism of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. Earlier today, the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, condemned the killing of civilians documented in Bucha but stopped short of accusing Russian forces of responsibility.
  • The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the evidence from Bucha shows “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities” by Russian forces. “The reports are more than credible. The evidence is there for the world to see,” he told reporters.
  • Scores of Russian diplomats have been expelled from European countries this week in a direct expression of governments’ outrage at the killings of Ukrainian civilians revealed as Moscow’s military forces left. In what amounts to one of the biggest diplomatic breakdowns of recent years, 149 Russian diplomats have been told since Monday they are no longer welcome to stay by governments in Italy, France, Germany and elsewhere.
  • The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, announced that the EU is proposing new sanctions against Russia, including an import ban on coal worth €4bn (£3.3bn) per year.
    The package will also include a full transaction ban on four key Russian banks, a ban on Russian vessels and Russian-operated vessels from accessing EU ports, as well as targeted export and import bans.
  • The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Nato and G7 foreign ministers meeting on Wednesday and Thursday will discuss the delivery of advanced weapons to Ukraine. Ammunition, medical supplies and “high-end” weapons systems would also be discussed, he added.

Hello. I’m Léonie Chao-Fong and I’ll continue to bring you all the latest news from the war in Ukraine. Feel free to get in touch on Twitter or via email.

Israel accuses Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine

Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, has strongly condemned Russia’s “war crimes” in Ukraine in a statement intensifying Israel’s criticism of Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

In a statement, Lapid said:

The images and testimony from Ukraine are horrific. Russian forces committed war crimes against a defenseless civilian population.

I strongly condemn these war crimes.

Earlier today, the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, condemned the killing of civilians documented in Bucha but stopped short of accusing Russian forces of responsibility.

Bennett said during a news conference:

We’re shocked by the terrible sights in Bucha - awful scenes - and we condemn them.

The suffering of Ukrainian citizens is immense, and we’re doing everything we can to assist.

The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov says it is the first time Israel has clearly accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine.

Updated

Displaced residents of Bucha should not return home yet, mayor says

Displaced residents of Bucha should not yet return to their homes because there are still mines in the area after Russian troops withdrew from the devastated Ukrainian town, according to its mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk.

Speaking on national television, Fedoruk said about 3,700 civilians had stayed in Bucha throughout the occupation by Russian troops, Reuters reports.

The town in the Kyiv region, which has been fully retaken by Ukrainian forces, had a pre-war population of about 37,000, according to state statistics.

Updated

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaking at a meeting of the UN Security Council.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaking at a meeting of the UN security council. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, reacts during a UN Security Council meeting.
The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzya, reacts during the meeting. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Updated

Zelenskiy: Russia wants to turn Ukraine into 'silent slaves'

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenksiy, has now finished speaking to the UN security council in New York. Here are some more details from his address:

He accused Russia of “supporting hatred at the level of the state” and exporting it to other countries “through their system of propaganda and political corruption”.

They provoked a global food crisis that could lead to famine in Africa, Asia, and other countries. They will surely, and in large scale, [lead to)] political chaos in many countries and destroy their domestic security.

Every UN member state should be interested in how the organisation will choose to act in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Zelenskiy continued.

Russia’s leadership echoes the actions of “colonisers in ancient times”, he says, starting with the looting of food and “gold earrings that are pulled out and covered with blood”.

They need our wealth, our people.

Russia has already deported hundreds of thousands of our citizens to their country. They abducted more than 2,000 children. They just abducted those children and continue to do so. Russia wants to turn Ukraine into silent slaves.

The Russian military are looting openly the cities and villages that they have captured. This is why it’s called looting. They are stealing everything, starting with food and earrings. Gold earrings that are pulled out and covered with blood.

Updated

President Zelenskiy demands Russia faces accountability for its actions, telling the UN:

We are dealing with a state that is turning the veto into the UN security council into the right to die.

This undermines the whole architecture of global security. It allows them to go unpunished. So they are destroying everything that they can.

The Ukrainian leader says the council should “remove Russia as an aggressor and a source of war so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war”.

Do you think that the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately.

The UN charter must be restored immediately. The UN system must be reformed immediately so that the veto is not the right to die.

Updated

Zelenskiy tells UN Russian troops blow up shelters so as many civilians as possible die

President Zelenskiy asks where is the security that the UN security council needs to deliver:

Where is the peace? Where are those guarantees that the UN needs to guarantee?

Russia’s actions in Ukraine have resulted in “the most terrible war crimes of all times we have seen since the end of World War Two”, he says.

They even deliberately blow up shelters where civilians hide from airstrikes. They are deliberately creating conditions in the temporarily occupied territories so that as many civilians as possible are killed there.

The massacre in Bucha is only one example of what Russian forces have been doing in Ukraine for the past 41 days, Zelenskiy continues.

He says that he and the world already “perfectly well” know how Russia will respond to these allegations.

They will blame everyone just to justify their own actions. They will say that there are various versions, different versions, and it is impossible to establish which one of those versions is true. They will even say that the bodies of those killed were allegedly thrown away and all the details are staged.

But it is 2022. Now we have conclusive evidence. There are satellite images. We can conduct full and transparent investigation.

Updated

President Zelenskiy says the world has yet to see what Russian forces have done in other occupied cities and regions of Ukraine.

He tells the UN security council:

Geography might be different or various, but cruelty is the same. Crimes are the same and accountability must be inevitable.

The Ukrainian leader reminds the UN that its very first charter is to “maintain peace and make sure that peace is adhered to”.

Zelenskiy: Russian troops' actions 'no different from terrorists'

President Zelenskiy tells the UN security council that the actions of Russian troops are “no different from other terrorists such as Daesh”.

They pursued a consistent policy of destroying ethnic and religious diversity, then inflame wars and deliberately lead them in such a way that to kill as many regular civilians.

He said he is addressing the UN on behalf of victims of Russia.

Some of them were shot on the streets, others were thrown into the wells so they die. They are in suffering. They were killed in their apartments, houses blown up by grenades.

The civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road just for their pleasure.

They cut off limbs, slashed their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children.

Their tongues were pulled out only because the aggressors did not want to hear from them.

Updated

Ukraine’s President Zelenksiy addresses UN security council

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is now addressing the UN security council meeting in New York via video, the first time he has addressed the council since Russia invaded his country on 24 February.

Zelenskiy is speaking about what he saw during his visit to the Ukrainian town of Bucha yesterday:

Yesterday I returned from our city of Bucha, recently liberated from Russian troops not far from Kyiv.

There is not a single crime that they would not commit. The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our country.

They shot and killed women outside their houses when they just tried to call someone who is alive, they killed entire families, adults and children and they tried to burn the bodies.

Updated

The UN undersecretary general for political and peacebuilding affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, has been speaking at the security council in New York, where she made reference to allegations of sexual violence perpetrated by Russian forces.

Claims of violence include “gang-rape and rapes in front of children”, she said. “There are also claims of sexual violence by Ukrainian forces and civil defence militias.”

The UN human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine continued to seek to verify these allegations, she said.

She said the UN had received credible allegations that Russian forces used cluster munitions in populated areas at least 24 times, and that the organisation was also investigating allegations that Ukrainian forces had used cluster munitions.

Updated

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, says the organisation’s high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, has spoken of “possible war crimes, grave breaches of international humanitarian law, and serious violations of international human rights law”.

The Russian offensive has also led to the displacement of more than 10 million people, he said, “the fastest forced population movement since the second world war”.

Far beyond Ukraine’s borders, the war has led to massive increases in prices of food, energy and fertilisers. Because Russia and Ukraine are linchpins of these markets, it has disrupted supply chains and increased the cost of transportation, putting even more pressure on the developing worlds.

Many developing countries are already on the verge of debt collapse due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lack of adequate liquidity and debt relief, stemming ultimately from the unfair nature of our global economic and financial system.

For these reasons, Guterres says it is “more urgent by the day to silence the guns”.

It is my duty to call the attention of the council to the serious damage being done to the global economy and particularly to vulnerable people and developing countries.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres addresses the United Nations Security Council during a meeting at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, New York City.
Guterres addresses the UN security council on Tuesday. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

Updated

UN secretary general says he will 'never forget' images of Bucha bodies

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, is addressing the UN security council in New York, where he said the war in Ukraine is “one of the greatest challenges ever” to the “international order and the global peace architecture” founded on the UN charter.

The war has led to “senseless” loss of life, massive devastation in urban centres and the destruction of civilian infrastructure, he said.

I will never forget the horrifying images of civilians killed in Bucha.

Guterres says he was “equally shocked by the personal testimony of rapes and sexual violence” that are now emerging from the conflict.

Updated

There is a live feed from the UN now in the live blog – you may have to refresh the page and press play on the video to start it.

GenMark Milley, chair of the joint chiefs of staff in the US, has just described recent nuclear rhetoric from Russia as “very provocative”. At the end of February Vladimir Putin put his country’s nuclear forces on to a higher alert level.

Updated

Britain’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, revealed on the second day of her visit to Warsaw that 60% of Moscow’s reserves were now unavailable to it, slightly higher than recent calculations. It follows US Treasury moves on Monday to make it harder for Russia to pay back its dollar-denominated debt.

But Truss, speaking alongside the Polish foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, said the west urgently needed to go further and faster to damage the Russian economy, saying: “The only way to end this war is for Vladimir Putin to lose in Ukraine.”

She warned: “Although Russian troops have been defeated in their initial assault on Kyiv, there has been no change in their intent and ambition. We are seeing Putin’s forces set their sights on the east and south of Ukraine, with the same reckless disregard for civilian lives and their nationhood.”

Read more from our diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour here: West must hit Russian economy even harder, says Liz Truss

Updated

We are not far away from the UN security council meeting in New York which will be addressed via video by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. It will almost certainly feature Russia, as permanent members of the UN security council, attempting to present their case that any images of war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine are “provocations” that have been staged to discredit Russia.

Russia had wanted to have a meeting yesterday to discuss this, but this was refused by the United Kingdom, which currently holds the rotating stewardship on the council. Russia holds a veto on the UN security council making any decisions.

US secretary of state: Bucha shows 'deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities'

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has just spoken to reporters in Maryland as he departs for Brussels for meetings with Nato counterparts and officials. He told reporters:

What we’ve seen in Bucha is not the random act of a rogue unit. It’s a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities. The reports are more than credible. The evidence is there for the world to see.

This reinforces our determination, and the determination of countries around the world, to make sure that one way or another, one day or another, there is accountability for those who committed these acts.

Blinken was specifically asked “Does the US have evidence linking senior officials in Russia” to ordering or having knowledge of these acts. He did not confirm that. He said “We are working as are other to put the evidence together to support the efforts” of those investigating and gathering evidence, and added “We said before the aggression we anticipated there would be atrocities committed.”

A rally in Berlin that was organised to draw attention to growing hostility towards Russians in Germany but included demonstrators supportive of the invasion of Ukraine has drawn sharp criticism from politicians and diplomats.

About 900 protesters in a 400-strong motorcade took part in the demonstration on Sunday that culminated in a gathering at the Olympic Stadium. Cars were draped in the Russian flag, and one bore the symbol “Z”, meant to signify solidarity with the Russian war. Participants reportedly sang patriotic Russian songs.

Christian Freier, a car mechanic identified as the organiser, displayed a Star of David on the front of his car above the slogan “Will we be next?”. He compared what he called the victimisation of Russians in Germany since the outbreak of the war with the persecution of Jews under the Nazis, and said participants were also angry at what he called propaganda about the invasion being spread in German schools.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, said he was appalled that the demonstration, which was apparently registered in advance with the police and had its protection, was allowed to go ahead, in particular on a day when atrocities against hundreds of civilians in the town of Bucha, north of Kyiv, were reported.

Read more of Kate Connolly’s report from Berlin here: ‘Motorcade of shame’: outrage over pro-Russia displays at Berlin rally

Here is a selection of some of the latest pictures we have been sent on the newswires from Ukraine and beyond:

Tetiana Rurak, 25-year-old widow Oleksandra Rurak, visits her soldier husband Volodymyr Rurak’s grave with her one and a half year old daughter, after he was killed in action, at the Lychakiv cemetery, in Lviv, western Ukraine.
A 25-year-old widow visits her soldier husband’s grave with her daughter after he was killed in action, at the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv, western Ukraine. Photograph: Nariman El-Mofty/AP
Ukrainian refugee Yulia Sarycheva draws a picture inside the house of a Russian family who are hosting her in Prague.
Ukrainian refugee Yulia Sarycheva draws a picture inside the house of a Russian family who are hosting her in Prague. Photograph: David W Černý/Reuters
People pass a mural of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy by artist Phil Atkinson in Granard, County Longford, Ireland.
People pass a mural of Volodymyr Zelenskyy by the artist Phil Atkinson in Granard, County Longford, Ireland. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA
Ukrainians who fled to Mexico amid Russia’s invasion wait at a makeshift camp near the San Ysidro Port of Entry of the US-Mexico border in Tijuana.
Ukrainians who fled to Mexico amid Russia’s invasion wait at a makeshift camp near the San Ysidro Port of Entry of the US-Mexico border in Tijuana. Photograph: Ariana Drehsler/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock

Updated

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP representing Odesa, said his country’s armed forces need weapons that can help defend against Russian air and sea attacks.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme, he said: “We need air defence, aircraft - that is the most important. We also need anti-ship missiles – we are thankful of the UK Government for Harpoons, but we need more.”

Goncharenko echoed some of the views of Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, about Russia’s territorial desires along the southern coast of Ukraine, but suggested those ambitions went further. [see 13:54]

PA Media quotes him saying: “They still want to attack Odesa, to take Odesa, to cut Ukraine from the sea and to go to the border of the European Union, because Romania is already there – and (there are) Russians in Transnistria, an occupied part of the Moldovan republic. That is their strategic aim to go there. For the moment, they are unsuccessful but they will try again.”

Updated

EU to propose fifth round of sanctions against Russia

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced that the EU is proposing new sanctions against Russia, including an import ban on coal worth €4bn (£3.3bn) per year.

Updated

The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has been speaking at a news conference ahead of meetings with foreign ministers on Wednesday and Thursday, where they will discuss the delivery of more weapons to Ukraine.

Stoltenberg told reporters:

We speak about advanced weapons systems. We speak about, for instance, javelins and other anti-tank weapons.

Ammunition, medical supplies and “high-end” weapons systems would also be discussed, he added.

Nato general secretary Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference to present the next North Atlantic Council (NAC) Ministers of Foreign Affairs meeting, at the NATO headquarters in Brussels on April 5, 2022.
Stoltenberg speaks during a press conference at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday. Photograph: François Walschaerts/AFP/Getty Images

Moscow was shifting its focus on completely taking the Donbas region in the coming weeks, Stoltenberg said.

We now see a significant movement of (Russian) troops away from Kyiv to regroup, re-arm and re-supply and shift their focus to the east.

In the coming weeks, we expect a further Russian push in eastern and southern Ukraine to try to take the entire Donbas and to create a land bridge to occupied Crimea.

Updated

Sixty countries will meet in Geneva from Wednesday to discuss curbs on the use of heavy bombs in urban areas in the wake of intense fighting in Ukraine believed to have killed and injured thousands in cities such as Mariupol.

The three-day conference, supported by the UN secretary general, aims to produce a draft international agreement to restrict use of indiscriminate bombing in cities, which statistics show overwhelmingly leads to the death of civilians.

An analysis published on Tuesday shows that when bombs went off in cities during 2021, 89% of those killed and injured were civilians – described as a “predictable harm” by one of the report’s authors, Iain Overton from the charity Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).

The global figures do not include any data from the conflict in Ukraine, but the pattern is expected to be similar for 2022. Initial figures recorded by AOAV in Ukraine have counted 1,411 civilian casualties – almost certainly an underestimate – 96% of which took place in urban areas.

Russian forces have sought to capture the port city of Mariupol in the south of the country with heavy shelling, with a theatre sheltering civilians and a maternity hospital struck during the past month. Ukraine has estimated that 5,000 civilians have been killed in the city but this is not possible to verify.

Laura Boillot, the coordinator of the International Network on Explosive Weapons pressure group, said that “when explosive weapons with wide area effects are used in populated areas among civilians and infrastructure, it is civilians that suffer the most”.

She added: “We’ve seen extensive use of heavy explosive weapon systems such as unguided missiles and multi-barrel rocket launchers in major towns and cities in Ukraine such as Kyiv and Mariupol. These weapons impact a wide area with blast and fragmentation, and are prone to inaccuracy.

All signs point to civilians being ‘directly targeted’ in Bucha, UN says

The UN human rights office spokesperson, Liz Throssell, said all the signs from the Ukrainian town of Bucha pointed towards civilians having been directly targeted and killed, AFP reports.

Throssell told reporters in Geneva:

What we’re talking about here appears to be the direct killing and targeting of civilians in Bucha.

Citing the horrifying images of people with their hands bound and bodies of women found naked and partially burned, she said:

This is extremely disturbing, and does really strongly suggest that they were directly targeted as individuals, and here, what we must stress is that under international humanitarian law, the deliberate killing of civilians is a war crime.

Throssell added:

All the signs are that the victims were directly targeted and directly killed.

You could argue there was a military context, for example, to a building being hit; it’s hard to see what was the military context of an individual lying in the street with a bullet to the head or having their bodies burned.

One resident of Bucha told AFP she saw Russian soldiers shoot a man in cold blood as units of “brutal” older troops sowed fear in the town, located 30km to the north-west of Kyiv’s city centre.

Olena, 43, told the news agency:

Right in front of my eyes, they fired on a man who was going to get food at the supermarket.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has blamed Russian troops for the killings, but the Kremlin has denied responsibility, suggesting images of the corpses in Bucha were “fakes”.

Updated

25-year-old widow Oleksandra Rurak, visits her soldier husband Volodymyr Rurak’s, grave with her one and a half year old daughter, after he was killed in action, at the Lychakiv cemetery, in Lviv, April 5, 2022.
A widow visits her soldier husband’s grave with her daughter at the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv on Tuesday. Photograph: Nariman El-Mofty/AP
Family and friends attend the funeral of a soldier who was killed in action, at the Lychakiv cemetery, Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
Family and friends attend the funeral at the Lychakiv cemetery of a soldier who was killed in action. Photograph: Nariman El-Mofty/AP

Updated

France has opened three inquiries over suspected war crimes in Ukraine committed against French citizens in the country, France’s national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office said.

In a statement, it said it was investigating possible crimes committed in the Ukrainian towns of Mariupol, Hostomel and Chernihiv between 24 February and 16 March.

The facts referred to by the investigations were allegedly committed to the detriment of French nationals.

Prosecutors had already opened a war crime investigation into the death of Franco-Irish Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski, who was shot near Kyiv while covering the war.

Updated

Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden expel Russian diplomats

More than 120 Russian diplomats have been expelled from EU countries in the last 28 hours, amid international outrage over killings in the town of Bucha, Reuters reports.

Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said today that 25 Russian diplomats and embassy staff will be expelled in response to alleged war crimes by the Russian military in Ukraine.

The Russian ambassador was not among the diplomats to be expelled from Madrid, he said.

His Italian counterpart, Luigi Di Maio, also confirmed that 30 Russian diplomats have been expelled “for national security reasons”.

Denmark earlier said it was expelling 15 Russian “intelligence officers” accused of spying on its territory.

Danish foreign minister, Jeppe Kofod, said diplomatic ties would remain with Moscow, and “the Russian ambassador and the rest of the embassy in Copenhagen are therefore not included in the expulsion”.

Sweden also announced it was expelling three Russian diplomats who conducted “illegal operations” in the country.

The announcements by Italy, Denmark and Sweden follow similar moves by France, which on Monday expelled 35 Russian diplomats, and Germany, which expelled 40 diplomats.

Also on Monday, Lithuania said it was expelling the Russian ambassador in response to Russia’s “military aggression” and the “horrific massacre in Bucha”.

In response, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said:

Narrowing down opportunities for diplomatic communication in such an unprecedentedly difficult crisis environment is a short-sighted move that will further complicate our communication, which is necessary to find a solution.

Meanwhile in Britain, the shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, demanded the expulsion of the Russian ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, in response to alleged “war crimes” committed in Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and his forces.

But the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, was understood not to be preparing to expel diplomats and intelligence officers from London, PA news agency writes.

Updated

Russian strike hits tank of nitric acid in Rubizhne, Ukraine says

A Russian strike has hit a tank of nitric acid in the eastern Ukrainian city of Rubizhne, causing a cloud of toxic smoke to cover the area, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s parliament tweeted:

Residents of Rubizhne have been warned to stay indoors or wear a face mask dipped in sodium solution, CNN cited Serhiy Haidai, the head of the Luhansk regional military administration, as saying.

It’s better to wait inside, this acid will decompose after the rain. But nobody knows when it’s going to rain.

So please watch this pink cloud and if it moves towards you – please hide inside and wait inside. This was a direct hit in the tank.

Updated

An anti-war protester has been photographed lying on the streets in Moscow with their hands tied behind their backs, in the same position as civilian bodies found sprawled by the roadside in the Ukrainian city of Bucha over the weekend.

Updated

Kremlin says Biden's war crime comment on Putin unacceptable

The Kremlin said remarks by US President Joe Biden yesterday calling for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes was unacceptable and unworthy of a US leader.

Biden was responding to harrowing images broadcast around the world after the discovery over the weekend of a mass grave and bodies in civilian clothes, some with their hands bound, in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv.

“You may remember I got criticised for calling Putin a war criminal,” Biden told reporters at the Fort McNair army post in Washington on Monday.

Well, the truth of the matter – we saw it happen in Bucha – he is a war criminal.

Speaking to reporters today, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said allegations Russian forces committed war crimes by executing civilians in Bucha were a “monstrous forgery” aimed at “denigrating” the Russian army:

It is a simply a well-directed - but tragic - show.

Peskov added:

We once again urge the international community: detach yourself from such emotional perceptions and think with your head. Compare the facts and understand what a monstrous forgery we are dealing with.

Russia does not reject the possibility of a meeting between Putin and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Peskov said, but he stressed that a meeting can only happen once a document has been agreed upon.

Peskov declined to comment on the progress of peace talks between Russian and Ukraine, which are said to be taking place today via video link, Interfax news agency cited a deputy Russian foreign minister as saying earlier today.

Updated

Civilian ship sinking in Mariupol after Russian shelling, Ukraine says

Ukraine’s interior ministry has said a civilian ship is sinking in the port of the besieged city of Mariupol after it was struck during “shelling from the sea” by Russian forces, causing a fire in the engine room.

The ship, flying the flag of the Dominican Republic, was berthed in the port when it was hit, the ministry said in a Telegram post with an image of the cargo vessel.

The crew was rescued, including one injured crew member, it said, without providing details about the nationalities of the crew members.

According to the ministry, the captain sent a distress signal when it came under fire with a message that reportedly read:

Warning! Warning! The ship under the flag of the Dominican Republic was brutally destroyed, everything was destroyed, the captain’s bridge was destroyed. Fire in engine room. There are wounded on board.

The ship is “gradually going under water”, the ministry said, adding that it is “impossible to conduct a rescue operation under constant fire”.

Updated

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends an interview for the representatives of Ukrainian media in Kyiv, Ukraine April 4, 2022.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends an interview with representatives of Ukrainian media in Kyiv on Monday. Photograph: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Reuters

Updated

Germany has reported a rise in attacks against Russian and Ukrainian migrants since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country’s interior minister, Nancy Faeser, said.

Since the end of February, 308 anti-Russian offences have been recorded by police, including 15 acts of violence, Reuters cited her interview with the Neue Osnabrüecker Zeitung.

Attacks against Ukrainians have also increased, Faeser said, with 109 offences recorded since the end of February, including 13 acts of violence like bodily harm. The majority of offences were property damage, insults and verbal threats.

About 250,000 Russian-born migrants and 150,000 Ukrainian-born migrants lived in Germany before 24 February, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Since then, more than 300,000 Ukrainians have fled to Germany.

Faeser told the newspaper:

This conflict should not be allowed to creep into our society.

We have to remind people that this is Putin’s criminal war. It is not the war of people with Russian roots who live here in Germany.

Updated

Ukraine says 165 children killed since Russian invasion

As of Tuesday 5 April, at least 165 children in Ukraine have died and 266 have been injured since the start of the Russian invasion, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

The figures do not include casualties in devastated front-line Ukrainian cities such as Mariupol. Interfax news agency quotes a report by the prosecutor general’s office:

These figures are not final, since work is underway to establish them in places of active hostilities, in temporarily occupied and liberated territories.

In particular, in the city of Mariupol, in certain territories of Kyiv, Chernihiv and Luhansk regions.

109 empty prams placed in the centre of Lviv to highlight the large number of children killed in ongoing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, March 18, 2022.
109 empty prams placed in the centre of Lviv last month to highlight the large number of children killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Photograph: Roman Baluk/Reuters

According to the report, 78 children were killed in Donetsk region, 77 in Kyiv region, 61 in Kharkiv, 49 in Chernihiv.

In one example, the report says a child was killed as a result of the shelling of the city of Mykolaiv by Russian forces.

It became known that during the occupation of Vorzel, Kyiv region, the aggressor’s servicemen threw a smoke grenade into the basement of one of the houses, where a 14-year-old child and a woman were hiding, and then opened fire.

The child died immediately, and the mother – two days later.

Note: The Guardian is not able to verify these figures.

A young baby looks out as people leave on a train for Poland as they flee their home towns that are under Russian military attack on March 23, 2022 in Lviv, Ukraine.
A young baby looks out as people leave on a train for Poland as they flee their home towns that are under Russian military attack on 23 March in Lviv, Ukraine. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Hello. I’m Léonie Chao-Fong and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news from the war in Ukraine. Feel free to drop me a message if you have anything to flag, you can reach me on Twitter or via email.

Updated

Today so far …

  • Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has accused Russia of attempting to cover up evidence of war crimes. Referring to the recently discovered bodies of civilians in towns surrounding Kyiv, Zelenskiy said Russia is “already launching a false campaign to conceal their guilt” in other areas of the country.
  • Zelenskiy visited Bucha, about 30km north-west of Kyiv, wearing body armour and surrounded by military personnel on Monday. He spoke of the death and destruction in the recently liberated towns of Stoyanka, Irpin and Bucha. “The cities are simply ruined,” he said. The Ukrainian president warned civilian casualties may be higher in other towns. He is due to address the UN security council later today.
  • Sumy Oblast governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky has reported that in Konotop district of Sumy Oblast, the Ukrainian military found the bodies of at least three tortured civilians.
  • Without showing any evidence to back their claims, several senior Russian officials have decried the reports of war crimes as fake. Dmitry Medvedev said “They were concocted for vast amounts of money”, and the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament Vyacheslav Volodin said “The situation in Bucha is a provocation aimed at discrediting Russia. Washington and Brussels are the screenwriters and directors and Kyiv are the actors. There are no facts - just lies.”
  • A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been released after being stopped during an attempt to reach the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol and held in nearby Manhush.
  • Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said there will be an attempt to open seven humanitarian corridors today. The routes will be in the Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions.
  • The mayor of Kyiv asked European politicians to cut off all commercial ties with Moscow, saying all payments it gave to Russia was “bloody money”.
  • The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s spokesperson has announced that she will travel to Kyiv this week to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. She will be accompanied by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s highest ranking diplomat, and they will visit Kyiv ahead of an event in Warsaw in Poland on Saturday.
  • Italy has expelled 30 Russian diplomats because of security concerns. Denmark has expelled 15. Russia has already stated that it will retaliate.
  • France’s European affairs minister Clement Beaune has told RFI radio that the European Union will most likely adopt a new round of sanctions against Russia on Wednesday.

That is it from me, Martin Belam in London, for now. I will be back later on this afternoon. Léonie Chao-Fong will be with you for the next couple of hours.

Updated

Belarusian author Sasha Filipenko writes for us today about the question of identity of those who speak Russian in former areas of the Soviet Union that are not part of modern Russia:

Recently, as someone born in Belarus who has lived in Russia, I have often been asked the same question: why did Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, nations so closely related to each other, develop in such different ways? My answer is very simple: this closeness has been greatly exaggerated by Moscow, and in fact we are all quite different.

I am the last Soviet first-former. My parents took me to school on 1 September 1991, just a few days after the empire essentially disappeared. My mum is Russian; my father, Ukrainian. I have Russian, Belarusian and Tartar roots, and my surname is Ukrainian. I am a product of the Soviet Union and of the 20th century.

But I’ve never queried my own identity: I’ve always known I am Belarusian. If someone told me I was Russian because I wrote in Russian, I would be perplexed. I firmly believe that the Russian language is not Russia’s property; for me it’s merely a means of communication. Speaking French in Geneva doesn’t make you French, speaking German in Zurich doesn’t make you German – you remain Swiss, just as I, while speaking Russian, remain Belarusian.

Read more of Sasha Filipenko’s piece here: ‘No one wants to be a little brother’: Belarus, Russia and Ukraine - a dysfunctional family affair

The former British prime minister Gordon Brown has spoken out about the reports of atrocities in Ukraine as part of his support for the Justice for Ukraine campaign, saying:

Now that crimes revealed at Bucha and Mariupol and elsewhere in Ukraine have shocked the world, we must set a clear path that brings Putin to justice. We are delighted to have received the support of 50 former Heads of State and Prime Ministers who have now signed up to support our petition.

Nearly 1.5 million people have signed it, an extraordinary sign of resolution from people across the world. What started off as a European project has now won support from every continent. It reflects the widespread global revulsion at the war crimes committed against Ukraine by Russian forces.

Brown went on to say:

I welcome the fact that the British justice minister Dominic Raab has offered support for the international criminal court’s investigation into war crimes by Russia. At the request of Ukraine, our petition proposes that in addition to this the ICC also sets up a special tribunal to probe the crime of aggression by Putin and his associates. Doing so will show that the international community is prepared to do whatever it takes to hold him to account for his actions.

The Justice for Ukraine campaign is calling for an international tribunal to try Putin and those accountable for the invasion of Ukraine for the crime of aggression.

Updated

EU's Ursula von der Leyen to travel to Kyiv to meet President Zelenskiy

The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s spokesperson has announced that she will travel to Kyiv this week to meet Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

She will be accompanied by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s highest ranking diplomat, and they will visit Kyiv ahead of an event in Warsaw in Poland on Saturday.

Updated

Italy has expelled 30 Russian diplomats because of security concerns, foreign minister Luigi Di Maio said this morning, according to comments sent to Reuters by a spokesperson.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on Tuesday said Ukraine’s efforts to push back Russian troops from Mariupol were facing difficulties.

In a televised interview with local media, Zelenskiy said the military situation in the southern port city was “very difficult.”

Reuters reports he also said Turkey had proposed a plan to help evacuate wounded people and dead bodies from the city, but cautioned that the initiative depended on the will of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zelenskiy also said that the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, would have to choose between Moscow and the “other world”, and that the Hungarian leader feared Russian influence. At the weekend Orbán added Zelenskiy to his list of “overpowered” opponents in the wake of his fourth consecutive election victory in Hungary.

Updated

Russia’s defence ministry has presented another Russian version of recent events, saying that Ukrainian special services had staged alleged killings of civilians in an attempt to spread propaganda through the western media.

“Soldiers of the 72nd Ukrainian Main Centre for Psychological Operations conducted another staged filming of civilians allegedly killed by the violent actions of the Russian armed forces” the ministry said.

Reuters reports that it went on to say: “Similar events have now been organised by Ukrainian special services in Sumy, Konotop, and other cities.”

Earlier today Dmitry Medvedev said the images that had emerged from Bucha were “fakes that matured in the cynical imagination of Ukrainian propaganda” and “concocted for vast amounts of money”.

The speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament said: “The situation in Bucha is a provocation aimed at discrediting Russia. Washington and Brussels are the screenwriters and directors and Kyiv are the actors. There are no facts - just lies.”

No evidence was provided to back up any of these Russian claims.

Updated

The mayor of Kyiv asked European politicians to cut off all commercial ties with Moscow, saying all payments it gave to Russia was “bloody money” and fuelling its army, Reuters reports.

“Every euro, every cent that you receive from Russia or that you send to Russia has blood, it is bloody money and the blood of this money is Ukrainian blood, the blood of Ukrainian people,” Vitali Klitschko said via video link to a mayors’ conference in Geneva.

In the same speech, he described the “genocide of Ukrainians” following a visit to Kyiv’s satellite towns like Bucha this week. He described seeing dead civilians, including an old woman, and a car with a white flag and the letters “children” on the outside that was shot up and had blood inside.

He also made claims – that have not been independently verified – that almost 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine, and that the mayor of Mariupol had informed him that 5,000 civilians had been killed in the besieged city.

Updated

A quick snap from Reuters here that Denmark is to expel 15 Russian diplomats, the latest in a series of similar moves across Europe. Russia has already said that it will retaliate.

Updated

Here is the latest from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on developments with their team who were trying to provide relief and an evacuation route to the besieged southern city of Mariupol. A spokesperson has told the Guardian:

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) team that was held by police in Manhush on Monday was released last night. This is of great relief to us and to their families. The team is focused now on continuing the humanitarian evacuation operation. This incident yesterday shows how volatile and complex the operation to facilitate safe passage around Mariupol has been for our team, who have been trying to reach the city since Friday.

Here is a section of the latest images we have received from Borodianka, taken yesterday. The city is about 80km to the north-west of Kyiv by road.

A heavily damaged appartment building is seen at the central square of Borodianka.
A heavily damaged apartment building in the central square. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
A woman crosses herself at the place of a mass grave in the town of Borodianka.
A woman crosses herself at the place of a mass grave in the town. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
A monument to the Ukrainian poet and political figure Taras Shevchenko with shrapnel holes in its head
A monument to the Ukrainian poet and political figure Taras Shevchenko with shrapnel holes in its head. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
A destroyed Russian armoured personnel carrier (APC)
A destroyed Russian armoured personnel carrier. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
A destroyed building
A destroyed building. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

Seven humanitarian corridors to be opened in Ukraine today

Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said there will be an attempt to open seven humanitarian corridors today. The routes will be in the Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, all of which are in the east of the country.

Updated

A few more points from Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s domestic TV address being reported by Reuters here:

  • The killings in Bucha showed the phrase “needing Denazification” – which Russia’s President Putin has frequently cited to justify aggression in Ukraine – applies more to Russia than to Ukraine.
  • Russia could ‘return’ in two years unless Ukraine is given adequate security guarantees.
  • Citing Donbas, he said Ukraine and Russia will not be able to agree on all points at once but should work on it.

Elsewhere, Interfax has reported that talks between Ukraine and Russia continue via videolink.

Updated

One of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin’s closest allies said claims that Russian forces executed civilians in Bucha were fake products of Ukrainian and western propaganda aimed at discrediting Russia.

“These are fakes that matured in the cynical imagination of Ukrainian propaganda,” Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said.

“They were concocted for vast amounts of money,” Reuters quotes Medevedev saying.

Earlier Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament in Russia said: “The situation in Bucha is a provocation aimed at discrediting Russia. Washington and Brussels are the screenwriters and directors and Kyiv are the actors. There are no facts - just lies.”

Neither man provided any evidence to back up their claims.

Updated

Zelenskiy: possible there will be no meeting with Putin

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been speaking on Ukrainian TV in an address to the people. Reuters has reported the following key lines so far:

  • It is possible there will be no meeting with him and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
  • The question is not whether there will be negotiations, but how strong you are at the negotiating table.
  • Ukraine will search for possible war criminals, and prosecutors in other countries will deal with them.

Red Cross team released after being held during attempt to evacuate Mariupol

A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross has been released after being stopped during an attempt to reach the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol and held in nearby Manhush, Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk has said.

“After negotiations, they were released during the night and sent to Zaporizhzhia,” Reuters quotes her saying. Zaporizhzhia is about 200km away from Mariupol in the south of the country.

France’s European affairs minister Clement Beaune has told RFI radio that the European Union will most likely adopt a new round of sanctions against Russia on Wednesday.

Reuters quotes him saying “The new sanctions will probably be adopted tomorrow”, adding the EU should also quickly act on gas and coal imports from Russia.

Reuters is carrying the words from Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament in Russia. He said:

The situation in Bucha is a provocation aimed at discrediting Russia. Washington and Brussels are the screenwriters and directors and Kyiv are the actors. There are no facts - just lies.

Updated

Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of parliament in Russia, has added his voice to the chorus of Russian dissent over the accusations of war crimes and that Russian forces targeted and murdered of civilians in Ukraine.

Reuters reports he has said that the images that have emerged have been a staged performance, and a provocation aimed at discrediting Russia. Volodin offered no evidence to back up his claims.

The UK’s former ambassador to Yugoslavia and to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood, has been appearing on Sky News this morning, and he said that he thought a larger number of Russian people will believe the war crimes accusations than Vladimir Putin would like.

He said “I think a large proportion of the Russian people will suspect that it’s true, and that all sorts of emotional forces will be making them very, very anxious to deny it. They had great trust in their armed forces, greater trust in them than the government in general. And this is such a terrible shock for them.”

He went on to say “It has been a shock for the Russians to reveal themselves as being so inept military. It is also a complete contrast to what they not only expected, but relied on, not just just the speed of their victory, they supposed, but also that it would be possible thereafter for them in effect to rule Ukraine.”

Wood said that the accusations of war crimes would make any successful annexation of areas of Ukraine by Russian forces more difficult to maintain. He said “even if Putin won and dominated the entire country, or the eastern part of it, or whatever it is, he would not now be able to secure the support of Ukrainian people. This [the events in Bucha] is absolutely unforgivable. People do not forget such things.”

He did however offer a defence of Russian actions, saying “in slight defence of the Russians, one has to remember that this is a war in which a lot of civilians are taking part. It is also a war which the Russians have been losing. Some of them are probably rather frightened, and their reactions are accordingly wicked, but emotionally perhaps understandable.”

He expressed concern that any ceasefire or peace agreement would not be a permanent solution.

“I think we are also in a difficult position in that we the West in general would like a peaceful outcome, of course, but we can’t negotiate on behalf of the Ukrainians. It’s up to them to decide what is possible and what should be achieved in negotiations.”

Sumy Oblast Governor Dmytro Zhyvytsky has reported that in Konotop district of Sumy Oblast, the Ukrainian military found the bodies of at least three tortured civilians.

The Kyiv Independent reports that they were found in places where Russian forces had been stationed. Russians withdrew from Sumy region on Sunday 3 April.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has further dampened the economic prospects for developing countries in east Asia and the Pacific, meaning lower economic growth and higher poverty in the region this year, the World Bank has warned.

The Ukraine factor came on top of the existing risks that the region – home to 2.1 billion people and stretching from China to Papua New Guinea - has been facing in recent years. They included the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the financial tightening in the United States, and the pandemic resurgence amid China’s zero Covid policies.

Read more of Vincent Ni’s piece here: Ukraine war to slow economic growth and drive up poverty in Asia, World Bank warns

Ukrainian mothers are reportedly writing the name of their children and a list family contacts on their children’s bodies in case their parents are killed by Russians and their children survive.

Today so far

Hello I’m Samantha Lock and before I hand this liveblog over to my colleague, Martin Belam, here is where the war in Ukraine currently stands as of 9am local time.

  • Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of attempting to cover up evidence of war crimes. Referring to the recently discovered bodies of civilians in towns surrounding Kyiv, Zelenskiy said Russia is “already launching a false campaign to conceal their guilt” in other areas of the country.
  • US president Joe Biden called the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a “war criminal” and said he would call for a war crimes trial as global outrage over claims of civilian killings by Russian soldiers in the Ukraine town of Bucha continued to mount. “We have to gather the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue to fight, and we have to get all the detail [to] have a war crimes trial. This guy is brutal and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous,” he said on Monday.
  • The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU was ready to send investigations teams to Ukraine to document alleged Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity. She said she had spoken to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy about the “dreadful murders” that were uncovered over the weekend.
  • Zelenskiy visited Bucha, about 30km north-west of Kyiv, wearing body armour and surrounded by military personnel on Monday. He spoke of the death and destruction in the recently liberated towns of Stoyanka, Irpin and Bucha. “The cities are simply ruined,” he said, adding that authorities had begun an investigation into possible war crimes. Zelenskiy said there was information to suggest more than 300 people were killed and tortured in Bucha alone.
  • The Ukrainian president warned civilian casualties may be higher in other towns. “Now, there is information that in Borodyanka and some other liberated Ukrainian towns, the number of casualties of the occupiers may be even much higher,” he said, referring to a town 25 km (16 miles) west of Bucha.
  • Zelenskiy also addressed western leaders, criticising what he described as delayed action against Russia. “Did hundreds of our people really have to die in agony for some European leaders to finally understand that the Russian state deserves the most severe pressure?” he asked. Referring to military aid, he said: “If we had already got what we needed ... we could have saved thousands of people.”
  • Zelenskiy will address the United Nations security council on Tuesday, after he said it was in Kyiv’s interest to have an open investigation into the killing of civilians in Ukraine.
  • Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said evidence of civilian killings in Bucha were just the “tip of the iceberg”. Speaking at a joint press conference with the UK foreign minister, Liz Truss, he said the “horrors of Bucha, Mariupol, and other places” demand “serious G7 and EU sanctions”.
  • The bodies of five civilians, including the mayor, were found with their hands tied in the village of Motyzhyn, 45km west of Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said. The mayor, Olga Sukhenko, her husband and their son, were abducted by Russian troops on 24 March, police said. “They tortured and murdered the whole family of the village head,” Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, said.
  • Zelenskiy said the country is preparing for “even more brutal activity” of Russian forces in the east and south of Ukraine. “We know what they are going to do in Donbas,” he said. Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said Russia is attacking the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna in the eastern Luhansk region, while preparing an attack on the city of Severodonetsk and working to capture Mariupol.
  • US national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared to corroborate the claims, saying “Russia is repositioning its forces to concentrate its offensive operations in eastern and parts of southern Ukraine” and this new phase of Russia’s invasion “could be measured in months or longer”.
  • Ukraine’s military has claimed Russia is regrouping troops for an aggressive attack in eastern Ukraine. According to a daily operation report as of 6am this morning, Russia’s goal is to now establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
  • Ukrainian forces have retaken key terrain in the north of Ukraine, after denying Russia the ability to secure its objectives and forcing Russian troops to retreat from the areas around Chernihiv and north of Kyiv, the UK’s ministry of defence claims.
  • The Red Cross said that a team sent to help evacuate civilians from Mariupol is being held by police in Russian-controlled territory. The team was stopped on Monday while carrying out humanitarian efforts to help lead a safe passage corridor for civilians and “is being held in the town of Mangush, 20km west of Mariupol,” ICRC spokeswoman Caitlin Kelly told AFP.
  • Russia has backed a new, self-proclaimed mayor of Mariupol, who is collaborating with Russian forces, Reuters reported.
  • Washington is working on more economic sanctions against Russia to be announced this week, Sullivan said, adding that “options that relate” to the country’s lucrative energy industry are on the table.
  • UK foreign secretary Liz Truss said she will be working with allies to ban Russian ships from western ports, crack down on Russian banks, and agree to “a clear timetable to eliminate our imports of Russian oil, gas and coal”.
  • The US will request Russia’s removal from the UN human rights council. During a visit to Romania, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, called for the international body to suspend Russia.
  • The head of the office of the Ukrainian president, Andriy Yermak, said a “very big historical mistake” was made when “specific Allied countries and specific leaders started a game with Russia” 14 years ago at the Nato summit in Bucharest, according to comments published on the website of Ukraine’s presidential office.
  • Russia’s latest sovereign bond coupon payments have been stopped, a source familiar with the matter and a spokeswoman for the US Treasury told Reuters, putting it closer to a historic default. The latest sovereign bond coupon payments have not received authorisation by the US Treasury to be processed by correspondent bank JPMorgan, the source said.
  • Cyber hacking group Anonymous has claimed to have leaked the personal data of 120,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “Personal data of 120,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine was leaked,” the group said in a statement on Twitter on Monday.
  • China’s foreign minister Wang Yi spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in a phone call on Monday, Reuters reports, with Beijing again calling on talks to end the conflict in Ukraine.

Some more images from the recently liberated town of Bucha have emerged showing destroyed Russian tanks littering the streets in the outskirts of Kyiv as Ukrainian servicemen sift through the debris of streets destroyed by shelling.

A shallow grave is also seen next to the church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho in the town’s central square.

A shallow grave seen next to a the church of Bucha, Ukraine.
A shallow grave seen next to a the church of Bucha, Ukraine. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Destroyed Russian tanks litter the streets in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv.
Destroyed Russian tanks litter the streets in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv. Photograph: President Of Ukraine/ZUMA Press Wire Service/REX/Shutterstock
Ukrainian servicemen seen shortly after regaining control of the town.
Ukrainian servicemen seen shortly after regaining control of the town. Photograph: Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

Ukrainian forces retake key terrain in north after forcing Russia to retreat, UK MoD says

Ukrainian forces have retaken key terrain in the north of Ukraine, after denying Russia the ability to secure its objectives and forcing Russian troops to retreat from the areas around Chernihiv and north of Kyiv, the UK’s ministry of defence claims.

The latest British intelligence report, released just after 6am GMT, reads:

Low-level fighting is likely to continue in some parts of the newly recaptured regions, but diminish significantly over this week as the remainder of Russian forces withdraw.

Many Russian units withdrawing from northern Ukraine are likely to require significant re-equipping and refurbishment before being available to redeploy for operations in eastern Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian president also addressed western leaders, criticising what he described as delayed action against Russia.

I would also like to note the reaction of the leaders of the democratic world to what they saw in Bucha. The sanctions response to Russia’s massacre of civilians must finally be powerful.

But was it really necessary to wait for this to reject doubts and indecision?

Did hundreds of our people really have to die in agony for some European leaders to finally understand that the Russian state deserves the most severe pressure?”

Zelenskiy again called for more military aid for Ukraine.

If we had already got what we needed - all these planes, tanks, artillery, anti-missile and anti-ship weapons, we could have saved thousands of people. I do not blame you - I blame only the Russian military. But you could have helped.

I will continue to say this to the face of all those on whom the decision on weapons for Ukraine depends.”

‘The end of your life will be behind bars’: Zelenskiy warns Russian leaders

In Zelenskiy’s signature late-night national address he addressed Russian soldiers and military officers.

“Nowadays people are not executed,” Zelenskiy began. “But all skabeevas, evening loudmouths, frontline liars and their bosses in Moscow should remember: the end of your life will be behind bars. At best.”

“It is now 2022. And we have much more tools than those who prosecuted the Nazis after World War II.”

Zelenskiy said Ukraine is “doing everything possible to identify all the Russian military involved in these crimes as soon as possible.”

Everything to punish them. This will be a joint work of our state with the European Union and international institutions, in particular with the International Criminal Court.

All crimes of the occupiers are documented. The necessary procedural basis is provided for bringing the guilty Russian military to justice for every crime they commit...

The time will come when every Russian will learn the whole truth about who of their fellow citizens killed. Who gave orders. Who turned a blind eye to the murders. We will establish all this. And make it globally known.”

Beijing calls for talks to end war

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in a phone call on Monday, Reuters reports, with Beijing again calling on talks to end the conflict in Ukraine.

The call, which Beijing said was made at Ukraine’s request, was the first reported high-level conversation between the countries since 1 March, when Kuleba asked Beijing to use its ties with Moscow to stop Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian foreign ministry said at the time.

“Wars end eventually. The key is how to reflect on the pain, to maintain lasting security in Europe and establish a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism,” Wang said, according to the ministry.

“China stands ready to play a constructive role in this regard in an objective position.”
Kuleba tweeted: “Grateful to my Chinese counterpart for solidarity with civilian victims.”

“We both share the conviction that ending the war against Ukraine serves common interests of peace, global food security and international trade,” he said.

China, which has grown closer with Moscow in recent years while it has also had cordial diplomatic ties and strong trade links with Ukraine, has refused to condemn Russia’s attack on the country or to call its actions there an invasion.

US and UK to request Russia’s removal from the UN human rights council

The United States and Britain announced plans to seek Russia’s suspension from the UN human rights council following allegations that Russian troops systematically executed civilians in Bucha, Ukraine.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, called for the international body to suspend Russia ideally some time this week. In a statement published late on Sunday, she said:

Russia’s participation on the Human Rights Council is a farce.

It hurts the credibility of the Council and the UN writ large. And it is simply wrong. Which is why we believe it is time for the UN General Assembly to suspend them.

“My message to those 140 countries who have courageously stood together is: the images out of Bucha and devastation across Ukraine require us to now match our words with action.”

“We cannot let a member state that is subverting every principle we hold dear to continue to participate” in the council, she said. A vote on Russia’s suspension could be held by Thursday, according to the US.

British foreign secretary Liz Truss was in agreement, saying: “Given strong evidence of war crimes, including reports of mass graves and heinous butchery in Bucha, Russia cannot remain a member of the UN Human Rights Council. Russia must be suspended.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he spoke with UN secretary general Antonio Guterres about events in Bucha and tweeted: “No place for Russia on the UN Human Rights Council.”

“Ukraine will use all available UN mechanisms to collect evidence and hold Russian war criminals to account,” Kuleba said.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, is set to address the United Nations security council today, after saying it is in Kyiv’s interest to have the most open investigation into the killing of civilians in Ukraine.

During the address he is expected to demand tough new sanctions on Moscow over killings in the town of Bucha he has called “war crimes” and “genocide”.

Speaking on Monday, he said that in Bucha, where mass graves and bodies were found after Ukraine took the town back from Russian forces, at least 300 civilians have been killed, and he expects that in Borodyanka and other towns the number of casualties may be even higher.

“I would like to emphasise that we are interested in the most complete, transparent investigation, the results of which will be known and explained to the entire international community,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

Updated

Civilian casualties may be higher in towns outside Bucha, Zelenskiy says

Ukrainian authorities have said the town of Borodyanka will be the worst-hit by the Russian invasion in the Kyiv region.

Prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said the number of civilian victims was likely to be higher than Bucha, where reports of civilian killings have prompted a global outcry.

Borodyanka lies about 50km north-west of the capital Kyiv and around 23km west of Bucha.

In a national televised address Zelenskiy said he believed at least 300 civilians had been murdered in Bucha alone.

And this is only one town: one of many Ukrainian communities which the Russian forces managed to capture,” he said.

Now, there is information that in Borodyanka and some other liberated Ukrainian towns, the number of casualties of the occupiers may be even much higher.”

AFP photographer Sergei Supinsky documented some of the damage in the town, northwest of Kyiv, on Monday.

People walk past destroyed buildings in the town of Borodyanka.
People walk past destroyed buildings in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv and around 23km west of Bucha. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
People walk past destroyed buildings in the town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.
People walk past destroyed buildings in the town of Borodyanka. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
A volunteer gives humanitarian aid to an elderly woman sitting with her dogs in Borodyanka.
A volunteer gives humanitarian aid to an elderly woman sitting with her dogs in Borodyanka. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images
A woman carries her bicycle as she walks past a destroyed Russian tank in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.
A woman carries her bicycle as she walks past a destroyed Russian tank in Borodyanka. Photograph: Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images

The Japanese government flew 20 Ukrainian refugees into Tokyo on Tuesday in a high-profile show of support for Ukraine.

The 20 - aged from 6 and 66 and including 15 women - are not the first Ukrainian refugees to arrive in Japan since Russia invaded - but they are the first to be flown in on a special government plane on a trip arranged by Japan’s foreign minister, according to Reuters.

“The government of Japan is committed to provide the maximum support to these 20 Ukrainians to help them live with a sense of peace in Japan, even though they are far away from their home county,” foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in Poland shortly before he and the refugees set off for Japan.

Hayashi, who had been assessing the refugee situation in Poland, flew in on a separate flight shortly before the 20 arrived.

National broadcaster NHK showed their arrival in a live broadcast.

The 20 are joining nearly 400 other Ukrainian refugees who have arrived since the Russian invasion.

Biden calls Putin a ‘war criminal’, calls for war crimes trial

US president Joe Biden has called for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes as western leaders prepared a fresh round of economic sanctions against Moscow amid mounting global outrage over claims of civilian killings by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

Biden was responding to harrowing images broadcast around the world after the discovery over the weekend of a mass grave and bodies in civilian clothes, some with their hands bound, in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv.

“You may remember I got criticised for calling Putin a war criminal,” Biden told reporters at the Fort McNair army post in Washington on Monday. “Well, the truth of the matter – we saw it happen in Bucha – he is a war criminal.”

“But we have to gather the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue to fight, and we have to get all the detail [to] have a war crimes trial. This guy is brutal and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous.”

Zelenskiy accuses Russia of covering up evidence of war crimes

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of attempting to cover up evidence of war crimes.

Referring to the recently discovered bodies of civilians in towns surrounding Kyiv, Zelenskiy said Russia is “already launching a false campaign to conceal their guilt” in other areas of the country.

We must also be aware that after the revealed mass killings of civilians in the Kyiv region, the occupiers may have a different attitude to their crimes in another part of our country where they came.

They are already launching a false campaign to conceal their guilt in the mass killings of civilians in Mariupol.

They will do dozens of stage interviews, re-edited recordings, and will kill people specifically to make it look like they were killed by someone else.

Probably, now the occupiers will try to hide the traces of their crimes. They did not do this in Bucha when they retreated. But in another area it is possible.”

“They are trying to distort the facts. But, as then, they will not succeed. They will not be able to deceive the whole world,” he added.

Ukainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
Ukainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy visits the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

Zelenskiy earlier vowed Ukraine would join the European Union and other international institutions such as the International Criminal Court to investigate and identify all possible war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.

“We are already doing everything possible to identify all the Russian military involved in these crimes as soon as possible. Everything to punish them,” he said in a national televised address.

“All crimes of the occupiers are documented,” Zelenskiy said, adding that the legal basis is being put in place to bring “culpable Russian troops” to justice over alleged atrocities.

“It is now 2022. And we have much more tools than those who prosecuted the Nazis after World War II,” he added.

Russia regrouping troops for attack on eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian military says

Ukraine’s military has just released its daily operation report as of 6am this morning, claiming Russia is regrouping troops for an aggressive attack in eastern Ukraine.

According to the report published by the general staff of the armed forces, Russia’s goal is to now establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

The enemy is regrouping troops and focusing efforts on preparing for an aggressive operation in the eastern of our State.

The goal is to establish full control over the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.”

The relocation of Russian units is ongoing, Ukrainian officials added.

“The opponent is replenishing supplies of food, fuel and lubricant materials and ammunition.”

Russian forces also continue to block the city of Kharkiv and establish full control over Mariupol, with constant artillery shelling destroying residential neighbourhoods and city infrastructure, the report adds.

Officials also accused Russian troops of shelling the southern city of Mykolaiv with ammunition banned by the Geneva convention.

Civil quarters and medical institutions, in particular - children’s hospital were under the enemy fire. There are dead and wounded, including children.”

A destroyed Russian armoured personnel carrier seen in Bucha, Ukraine.
A destroyed Russian armoured personnel carrier seen in Bucha, Ukraine. Photograph: Alexey Furman/Getty Images

Summary and welcome

Hello and welcome to our ongoing live coverage of the war in Ukraine. I’m Samantha Lock.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy will address the UN security council today after videos and photos showed streets in the town of Bucha strewn with corpses of what appeared to be civilians, some with their hands tied behind their back. The images have led to global revulsion, calls for tougher sanctions on Russia and its suspension from the UN’s premiere human rights body, the human rights council.

There are also fears that similar scenes will be found in other towns where Russians have retreated.

Here are the latest developments:

  • US president Joe Biden called the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, a “war criminal” and said he would call for a war crimes trial as global outrage over claims of civilian killings by Russian soldiers in the Ukraine town of Bucha continued to mount. “We have to gather the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue to fight, and we have to get all the detail [to] have a war crimes trial. This guy is brutal and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous,” he said on Monday.
  • The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU was ready to send investigations teams to Ukraine to document alleged Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity. She said she had spoken to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy about the “dreadful murders” that were uncovered over the weekend.
  • Zelenskiy visited Bucha, about 30km north-west of Kyiv, wearing body armour and surrounded by military personnel on Monday. He spoke of the death and destruction in the recently liberated towns of Stoyanka, Irpin and Bucha. “The cities are simply ruined,” he said, adding that authorities had begun an investigation into possible war crimes. Zelenskiy said there was information to suggest more than 300 people were killed and tortured in Bucha alone.
  • The Ukrainian president warned civilian casualties may be higher in other towns. “Now, there is information that in Borodyanka and some other liberated Ukrainian towns, the number of casualties of the occupiers may be even much higher,” he said, referring to a town 25 km (16 miles) west of Bucha.
  • Zelenskiy also addressed western leaders, criticising what he described as delayed action against Russia. “Did hundreds of our people really have to die in agony for some European leaders to finally understand that the Russian state deserves the most severe pressure?” he asked. Referring to military aid, he said: “If we had already got what we needed ... we could have saved thousands of people.”
  • Zelenskiy will address the United Nations security council on Tuesday, after he said it was in Kyiv’s interest to have an open investigation into the killing of civilians in Ukraine.
  • Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said evidence of civilian killings in Bucha were just the “tip of the iceberg”. Speaking at a joint press conference with the UK foreign minister, Liz Truss, he said the “horrors of Bucha, Mariupol, and other places” demand “serious G7 and EU sanctions”.
  • The bodies of five civilians, including the mayor, were found with their hands tied in the village of Motyzhyn, 45km west of Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said. The mayor, Olga Sukhenko, her husband and their son, were abducted by Russian troops on 24 March, police said. “They tortured and murdered the whole family of the village head,” Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, said.
  • Zelenskiy said the country is preparing for “even more brutal activity” of Russian forces in the east and south of Ukraine. “We know what they are going to do in Donbas,” he said. Ukraine’s defence ministry spokesperson Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said Russia is attacking the cities of Rubizhne and Popasna in the eastern Luhansk region, while preparing an attack on the city of Severodonetsk and working to capture Mariupol.
  • US national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared to corroborate the claims, saying “Russia is repositioning its forces to concentrate its offensive operations in eastern and parts of southern Ukraine” and this new phase of Russia’s invasion “could be measured in months or longer”.
  • The Red Cross said that a team sent to help evacuate civilians from Mariupol is being held by police in Russian-controlled territory. The team was stopped on Monday while carrying out humanitarian efforts to help lead a safe passage corridor for civilians and “is being held in the town of Mangush, 20km west of Mariupol,” ICRC spokeswoman Caitlin Kelly told AFP.
  • Russia has backed a new, self-proclaimed mayor of Mariupol, who is collaborating with Russian forces, Reuters reported.
  • Washington is working on more economic sanctions against Russia to be announced this week, Sullivan said, adding that “options that relate” to the country’s lucrative energy industry are on the table.
  • UK foreign secretary Liz Truss said she will be working with allies to ban Russian ships from western ports, crack down on Russian banks, and agree to “a clear timetable to eliminate our imports of Russian oil, gas and coal”.
  • The US will request Russia’s removal from the UN human rights council. During a visit to Romania, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, called for the international body to suspend Russia.
  • The head of the office of the Ukrainian president, Andriy Yermak, said a “very big historical mistake” was made when “specific Allied countries and specific leaders started a game with Russia” 14 years ago at the Nato summit in Bucharest, according to comments published on the website of Ukraine’s presidential office.
  • Russia’s latest sovereign bond coupon payments have been stopped, a source familiar with the matter and a spokeswoman for the US Treasury told Reuters, putting it closer to a historic default. The latest sovereign bond coupon payments have not received authorisation by the US Treasury to be processed by correspondent bank JPMorgan, the source said.
  • Cyber hacking group Anonymous has claimed to have leaked the personal data of 120,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. “Personal data of 120,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine was leaked,” the group said in a statement on Twitter on Monday.
A local resident plants tulips near a damaged apartment building in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine.
A local resident plants tulips near a damaged apartment building in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
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