Volodymyr Zelenskiy to demand Russia sanctions after Bucha killings | Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskiy will address the UN security council on Tuesday amid global revulsion at apparently deliberate civilian killings by Russian troops in Ukraine, as the US and EU prepared further sanctions against a defiant Moscow.

The Ukrainian president is expected to demand tough economic measures against Russia after a mass grave and the bodies of civilians, some with their hands bound, were discovered in the town of Bucha outside Kyiv.

Zelenskiy, who visited Bucha on Monday after officials said the bodies of 410 civilians had been recovered from Kyiv-area towns when Russian troops withdrew, described the killings as war crimes that would be “recognised by the world as genocide”.

A deputy Russian foreign minister was quoted as saying intensive talks between Moscow and Kyiv were continuing via video link and Zelenskiy conceded in a TV interview on Tuesday that negotiations with Russia were still the only option.

He said, however, that in the wake of the killings talks were now a “challenge”, adding that it was possible he and Putin would not personally hold talks. In an early morning video address, he said Bucha was “only one town” and the number of civilian casualties in others, including Borodyanka 25km west, “may be even much higher”.

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

Russia has denied responsibility, suggesting the images are fake or the deaths occurred after Russian forces pulled out. However, satellite photographs taken before the withdrawal show bodies in some of the same places they were later found.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, claimed the atrocities were committed by Ukrainian nationalists, adding that Russia would present further “factual evidence” to the security council to that effect on Tuesday.

Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian special services of staging civilian killings to spread propaganda in the western media, saying similar “events” had also been “organised by Ukrainian special forces in Sumy, Konotop, and other cities”.

Dmitry Medvedev, one of Putin’s closest allies and deputy secretary of Russia’s security council, claimed the killings were “fakes that matured in the cynical imagination of Ukrainian propaganda” and “concocted for vast amounts of money”.

The speaker of the Russian parliament’s lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, alleged Bucha was “a provocation aimed at discrediting Russia”, with “Washington and Brussels the screenwriters and directors and Kyiv are the actors. There are no facts – just lies.”

However, Maxar Technologies satellite imagery of one Bucha street 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 close-ups of Bucha’s Yablonska street concluded, after comparing it 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.

Britain’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, called the images from Bucha “harrowing, appalling, probable evidence of war crimes and possibly a genocide,” and said the security council needs “to think about how we deal with that”.

Amid growing outrage, the US president, Joe Biden, on Monday called Putin “a war criminal” and demanded “a war crimes trial”. The White House promised fresh sanctions on Moscow would be announced this week. The US and UK have also called for Russia to be suspended from the UN’s human rights council.

As Italy and Denmark joined France and Germany in expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will travel to Kyiv to meet Zelenskiy later this week accompanied by Josep Borrell, the bloc’s highest ranking diplomat, her spokesperson said on Tuesday.

France has suggested new measures could target Russian oil and coal exports, although Germany has warned it is too soon to cut off Russian gas. Clément Beaune, France’s Europe minister, said on Tuesday the EU would most likely adopt a new round of sanctions against Russia on Wednesday.

Russia supplies about a third of Europe’s gas and officials in several EU countries have urged caution around measures that could touch off a European energy crisis despite Putin’s efforts to energy as a lever to fight back against western sanctions.

Zelenskiy said sanctions must be significantly ramped up in the wake of the killings in Bucha, adding: “But … did hundreds of our people have to die in agony for some European leaders to finally understand that the Russian state deserves the most severe pressure?”

The Ukrainian president also called for additional weapons from western allies, saying more equipment could have saved thousands. “I do not blame you – I blame only the Russian military,” he said. “But you could have helped.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said he had spoken with the UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, about Bucha, stressing that Ukraine would “use all available UN mechanisms to collect evidence and hold Russian war criminals to account”. Kuleba also spoke with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.

Europe’s worst conflict in decades, sparked by Russia’s invasion on 24 February, has killed 20,000 people, according to Ukrainian estimates. The UN refugee agency has said more than 4.2 million refugees had fled the country, while the International Organization for Migration said nearly 6.5 million people are internally displaced.