Ukraine on Sunday accused Russian forces of carrying out a “massacre” in the town of Bucha, while Western nations reacted to images of dead bodies there with calls for new sanctions against Moscow.
Ukraine’s defense minister on Sunday accused Russian forces of an array of atrocities.
Oleksii Reznikov said the crimes came to light after Ukrainian forces moved into cities and towns after the invaders withdrew.
“This is not a special operation, these are not police actions. These are ordinary racists, fascists, and inhumane, who simply committed crimes against civilians, raped, killed, shot them in the back of the head. The whole world needs to know about this.”
These images taken by Reuters witnesses in Bucha show what appear to be victims in a mass grave, and bodies lying in the streets.
Bucha lies 23 miles northwest of the capital Kyiv, an area Ukrainian troops said they recaptured on Saturday.
Bucha’s mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk said on Sunday that 300 residents had been killed during a month-long occupation by the Russian army.
Reuters could not immediately verify this.
Russia’s defense ministry denied the Ukrainian allegations, saying footage and photographs showing dead bodies in Bucha were “yet another provocation” by Kyiv.
It said Russian military units had left Bucha on March 30, and that civilians had been free to move around the town or evacuate while it was under Russian control.
But the reports and images of dead civilians brought outraged pro-Ukrainian demonstrators to the streets of Berlin on Sunday.
“It is horrible, it is not about the war. It is not the war right now. They want to erase the Ukraine as the culture, as the people.”
And that sentiment echoed across Western capitals.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described images of dead bodies there as “a punch in the gut.”
And the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain, along with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, expressed outrage over the reports from Bucha.
Reznikov vowed to document the alleged atrocities, and said Ukraine would weigh bringing charges in the International Criminal Court.
”There is a whole list: these are war crimes, these are crimes against humanity.”
The images of corpses in civilian clothes left behind by departing Russian troops has prompted calls from officials in Ukraine and Europe for tougher sanctions on Moscow.
Via our partners at Reuters
