Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy addressed the UN’s most powerful body on Tuesday amid claims of Russia’s “deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities.”
QUICK FACTS:
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to the United Nations Security Council today regarding alleged evidence of civilian massacres in areas that Russian forces recently withdrew from, according to The Associated Press (AP).
- “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,” Zelenskyy said. “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.”
- Ukrainian officials have said at least 410 civilians have been killed in towns around Kyiv which had been recaptured from Russian forces, as police and other investigators reportedly have walked the silent streets of Bucha, Kyiv on Tuesday, according to AP, taking notes on bodies that residents showed them.
- AP also claims its journalists in Bucha have counted dozens of corpses in what they call civilian clothing, many appearing to have been shot at close range and some having their hands bound or their flesh burned.
- The journalists also say they saw a mass grave in a churchyard holding bodies wrapped in plastic.
- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said satellite images from Bucha revealed “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities.”
- NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg also said, “When and if [Russia] withdraw[s] their troops and Ukrainian troops take over, I’m afraid they will see more mass graves, more atrocities and more examples of war crimes.”
- Russia denies these allegations (see below).
RUSSIA DENIES ALLEGATIONS:
- “We continue to insist that all accusations against Russia, against Russian military are not merely groundless, but a well-directed show, nothing else but a tragic show,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov argued.
- Peskov emphasized how the Russian position had already been “rather systematically explained” by Permanent Representative to the UN Vasiliy Nebenzya and by the Ministry of Defense.
- “The information was delivered. But, on the other hand, there is an impression that the collective West simply shut its eyes and ears with blinds and does not want to listen [to] anything. This is regrettably a reality, [but], despite all that, we still intend to actively promote our arguments,” the spokesman said.
- Commenting on the possibility of an investigation of the Bucha situation, the spokesman noted that “it is necessary to consider, how possible a truly impartial, unbiased, and neutral investigation is at this moment.”
- “We continue to insist that all accusations against Russia, against Russian military are not merely groundless, but a well-directed show, nothing else but a tragic show,” Peskov said.
- “They will not succeed; we once again call on, first and foremost, UN Security Council members, Western leaders to refrain from an emotional perception, based on nothing, and just to think rationally and to attempt to juxtapose the facts, in order to understand what kind of horrific forgery we are talking about,” the spokesman went on to say.
BACKGROUND:
- Russia’s Peskov explained that Russian diplomats are continuing their attempts to deliver information to the United Nations, but that these diplomats’ “work is being undermined in rather unprecedented ways, our initiatives are being blocked, but, despite that, we will not stand idly by.”
- On April 3, the Russian Ministry of Defense rejected Kyiv’s accusations of the murder of civilians in the town of Bucha, stating that Russian forces had completely left Bucha by March 30, while evidence of the alleged war crimes only appeared four days later, when Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) officers arrived in Bucha.
- The Ministry of Defense also noted how on March 31, Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk confirmed that there were no Russian forces in the town and did not mention any shot civilians.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the situation in Bucha a “fake news attack.”
