Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has told the UN Security Council the Russian military must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes, accusing the Kremlin’s troops of the worst atrocities since the Second World War.
Mr Zelenskiy told council members that civilians had been shot in the back of the head after being tortured, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.
“They cut off limbs, cut their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children. Their tongues were pulled out only because their aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them,” he said.
“Anyone who has given criminal orders and carried them out by killing our people will be brought before the tribunal which should be similar to the Nuremberg tribunals.”
The Ukrainian leader made his plea by video as grisly evidence continued to emerge of civilian massacres carried out by Russian forces on the outskirts of Kyiv before they pulled back from the capital.
The images, particularly from the town of Bucha, have stirred global revulsion and led to demands for tougher sanctions and war crime charges.
Making his first appearance before the UN’s highest body, Mr Zelenskiy said the Russian troops are no different from other terrorists like the so-called Islamic State group. He showed the council brief video footage of bloody corpses that ended with the words “Stop Russian Aggression”.
He stressed that Bucha was only one place and there are more with similar horrors, and called for a tribunal similar to the one set up at Nuremberg to try war criminals after the Second World War.
The grisly scenes of battered and burned bodies and evidence that some of the dead were bound and shot in the head have led western nations to expel dozens more of Moscow’s diplomats and propose further sanctions, including a ban on coal imports from Russia.
The head of Nato warned that Russia is regrouping its forces to deploy them to eastern and southern Ukraine for a “crucial phase of the war”, and said more horrors may come to light as Russian troops continue to pull back in the north.
“When and if they withdraw their troops and Ukrainian troops take over, I’m afraid they will see more mass graves, more atrocities and more examples of war crimes,” secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said.
Ukrainian officials said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv that were recaptured from Russian forces and a “torture chamber” was discovered in Bucha.
Mr Zelenskiy told the Security Council there was “not a single crime” that Russian troops had not committed in Bucha.
“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,” he said.
Police and other investigators walked the silent streets of Bucha on Tuesday, taking notes on bodies.
Associated Press journalists in the town counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes. Many appeared to have been shot at close range, and some had their hands bound or their flesh burned. A mass grave in a churchyard held bodies wrapped in plastic.
The Kremlin denounced the images as fake and suggested the scenes were staged by the Ukrainians, but high-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, during the time Russian forces were in the town.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the images from Bucha revealed “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities”. He said the reports were “more than credible” and the US and other countries will seek to hold the culprits accountable.
As western leaders condemned the killings in Bucha, Italy, Spain and Denmark expelled dozens of Russian diplomats, following moves by Germany and France. Hundreds of Russian diplomats have been sent home since the start of the invasion, many accused of being spies.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the expulsions a “short-sighted” measure that would complicate communication and warned they would be met with “reciprocal steps”.
In another show of support, the European Union’s executive branch proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia, in what would be the first sanctions from the bloc targeting the country’s lucrative energy industry over the war. The coal imports amount to an estimated €4 billion per year.
The US, in co-ordination with the European Union and Group of Seven nations, is also set to roll out more sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, including a ban on all new investment in the country, a senior US administration official said, speaking on condition to discuss the upcoming announcement.
