Freelance journalists who went to the city of Bukha, just northwest of the capital, found the streets full of corpses at the weekend. The dead were wearing civilian clothes and some had their hands tied behind their backs, apparently executed.
Others were buried in a mass grave. More than 300 residents were killed, according to the city mayor.
A man gestures at a mass grave in the city of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, April 3, 2022. SERGEI SUPINSKY / AFP / Getty
In the central Ukrainian village of Kalynivka, closer to the cities of southern and eastern Ukraine, Russia has been hit by artillery and air strikes for weeks, Irina Kostenko said, and that the Russians had killed her only son, Oleksei.
She said she brought her son’s body back home in a pram and then buried him alone in the garden, wrapped in a rug, in a shallow grave.
He was killed at the age of 27, but Kostenko stuck to a photo of him as a child standing next to his grave.
“This is my love, my sweetheart,” he said.
Senior foreign correspondent for CBS News Holly Williams reports that Ukrainian officials shared photos taken on a highway outside the capital at the weekend showing the naked bodies of at least four women. Officials said Russian troops tried to burn the women’s bodies.
The Observatory for Human Rights and other groups have documented cases of alleged rape by Russian troops during the invasion launched by Vladimir Putin on February 24. Ukrainian officials are investigating.
Zelensky calls Russian attack on Ukraine “genocide” on “Face the Nation” 07:59
Speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of committing genocide in his country. “We are destroying and exterminating,” he said, “and that is what is happening in 21st century Europe.”
On Monday, Zelensky visited Bucha to inspect the damage and talk to residents. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said the president had found “evidence of mass murder”.
According to Geraschchenko, a BBC correspondent asked Zelenskyy if he still believed that peace could be negotiated with Russia. The president said he would do it, “because Ukraine needs to find peace. We are in 21st century Europe. We will continue our diplomatic and military efforts.”
The President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy (C) speaks to reporters in the city of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kiev, April 4, 2022. RONALDO SCHEMIT / AFP / Getty
The southeastern port of Mariupol has been besieged and bombed by the Russians for almost 40 days since the war began. Thousands may have been killed there alone, according to the United Nations, but it is impossible to get an accurate picture because Mariupol has been cut off from the outside world.
Ilona, 17, and her 10-year-old brother from Milan managed to leave the city on Friday with their parents. CBS News found them sitting silently in an evacuation center, apparently shocked.
“There were constant bombings, constant explosions,” Ilona told Williams. There were times when they thought they would die in their city, but he said they tried throughout the ordeal “to stay together – we tried not to panic”.
Refugee women share the horror they faced while trapped in Mariupol in the middle of the war: “We carried corpses” 01:36
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said almost two weeks ago that the United States had identified Russian forces as committing “war crimes” in Ukraine, accusing them of “indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians.”
On Sunday, he told CNN that the images from Boutsa were a “punch in the gut” and said that the US was “working to document” and provide its own information “to the relevant institutions and organizations that will collect all this.” to ensure that any forces guilty of war crimes would be held accountable.
“We can not normalize this,” he said. “This is the reality of what happens every day, as long as Russia’s barbarism against Ukraine continues. That is why it must end.”
We strongly condemn the apparent atrocities committed by Kremlin forces in Bukhara and throughout Ukraine. We seek accountability using every tool available, documenting and exchanging information to hold those responsible accountable.
– Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) April 4, 2022
On Monday, Russian officials denied that civilians had been killed in Bucha. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the horrific scenes in Bukha were falsified by Ukrainian forces as a “provocation”. It has become a common refrain from Moscow, issued after previously alleged atrocities that came to light in this war and during Russia’s long-term involvement in the violent civil war in Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has dismissed reports of a “fake attack” on Bhutan, saying Russia was calling for “an urgent Security Council meeting on the issue, as we see such provocations as an immediate threat to international peace and security.”
But the head of the United Nations on human rights was among those who expressed horror in the scenes from Bucha on Monday.
Congress on how Putin’s war in Ukraine mimics actions in Syria 12:27
“I am appalled by the images of civilians lying dead on the streets and in makeshift graves in the Ukrainian city of Bucha,” said Michelle Bachelet, UN Secretary-General. “Reports from him and other areas raise serious and worrying questions about possible war crimes, serious violations of international humanitarian law and serious violations of international human rights law.”
CBS News correspondent Pamela Falk told the UN that US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield discussed with the Romanian prime minister on Monday the US intention to try to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
According to a reading of the Thomas-Greenfield meeting with the Romanian leader, he called for the expulsion of Russia from the rights body, “in light of growing evidence that members of the Russian forces are committing war crimes in Ukraine and after horrific reports of violence against civilians in Bucha “.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, who sided with his Polish counterpart during a visit to Warsaw, said he was “deeply shocked by the news of the extremely brutal violence against civilians near Kyiv.”
“The killing of innocent civilians is a violation of international humanitarian law and is unacceptable and I strongly condemn these acts,” he added. “The Russian attack is a clear violation of international law.”
We knew that Putin’s plans for the invasion included brief executions by the military and its intelligence services. Reports of executions and killings of civilians emerging from liberated areas are frightening and creepy. https://t.co/Yea1Lhsqe6
– Richard Moore (@ ChiefMI6) April 3, 2022
In London, the head of the British CIA, MI6 chief Richard Moore, tweeted that Russia had planned mass executions as part of its strategy in Ukraine. An earlier statement had called for the beleagured PM to resign.
According to Williams, Russian soldiers accused of slaughtering unarmed civilians in Bucha and elsewhere in Ukraine will probably never be brought to justice.
The body of a man with his hands tied behind his back, who according to the residents were shot by Russian soldiers, is on the street in the middle of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Bucha, Ukraine, April 3, 2022. ZOHRA BENSEMRA / REUTERS
But despite horrific images and thousands of his own soldiers being killed on the battlefield, a new poll in Russia found that Putin’s approval rating had risen to 83% since the invasion began.
While thousands have been arrested in connection with anti-Ukrainian protests in Russian cities over the past month, many Russians rely solely on the country’s state-run news agencies for information. These media only present the Kremlin version of what Putin calls a “special military operation” and no Russian media outlet is free to report the truth about what is happening in Ukraine.
How Russia Destroys Anti-War Protests 03:46 More
