Bucha massacre. Ukraine said the Russians withdrew from Bucha, leaving behind dozens of dead bodies just in the streets. April 3, 2022.
Russia retorts, claiming Ukraine and the West “staged” the massacre
Washington/Moscow/Kyiv: After photos of the massacre of civilians in Bucha surfaced, United States President Joe Biden today called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and vowed to provide Ukraine “with the weapons they need to continue the fight”.
“You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal. Well, the truth of the matter — you saw what happened in Bucha. This warrants him — he is a war criminal,” Biden told reporters here. He said,” This guy is brutal. And what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous, and everyone’s seen it.”
Moscow however refuted the charges and its Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at his meeting with the United Nations Under-Secretary-General Martin Griffiths in Moscow today requested an urgent UN Security Council meeting on the issue.
Earlier, the Ukraine government came out with a statement today, that said, “Russian troops have no limits in their crimes. Liberation of the Kyiv region, particularly the towns of Bucha and Irpin, revealed the scale of Russia’s atrocities committed against Ukrainian people”.
It said law enforcement agencies were collecting all necessary information to assess the scale of atrocities. “The first findings are scary. The mayor of Bucha Anatoly Fedoruk informed that 280 people were buried in mass graves. Killed people lie on the streets. Dozens of them were found with tied hands. While leaving, the invaders mined dead bodies and civilian buildings. The Russian invaders brutally killed the head of the village of Motyzhyn, Olha Sukhenko, her husband Ihor and son Oleksandr. The whole family was ruined.”
Lavrov though termed it as unfortunate that attempts continued to politicise humanitarian issues and even to speculate on them. He claimed that two weeks ago, attempts were made to present the situation in a Mariupol maternity ward as a crime by the Russian military. It, he claimed, later turned out that the purpose of these efforts was openly provocative, and that fake materials had been submitted. “They were later debunked,” he said. He called the Bucha episode, “another information attack”, soon after Russian service personnel left the vicinity under specific plans and agreements. “A “show” was staged there several days later, and Ukrainian representatives and their Western patrons are broadcasting it on all channels and social media networks. All Russian service personnel left the town on March 30, 2022. On March 31, 2022, the mayor of Bucha made an official statement that everything was all right there. Two days later, we saw the “show,” organised on the town’s streets, and they are now trying to use it for anti-Russia purposes,” Lavrov claimed before Griffiths.
When asked in Washington whether he agreed that what was happening in Bucha was genocide, Biden said, “No, I think it is a war crime.” Asserting that Putin should be held accountable, the US President said he was seeking more sanctions and will have “time to announce that to you”.
Earlier today, the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, stated, “Criminals should be called criminals, brought to justice and convicted. The photos from Bucha prove the fallacy of the belief that one must seek compromise at any cost. In fact, the defenders of Ukraine need three things in the first place: weapons, weapons, and weapons again.” The Polish Foreign Ministry said, “The pictures of civilians in Bucha, shot in the back of the head, with their hands tied, can be compared to the darkest times of Stalinist and Nazi totalitarianism”.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry said the Bucha massacre proved that Russian hatred towards Ukrainians “is beyond anything Europe has seen since World War II”.
According to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, 410 bodies of killed civilians have been taken out of the territory of the Kyiv region for examination. In the coming days, law enforcement agencies will uncover more details, and the real scale of the Bucha massacre will become more clear.
“The scale of Russia’s war crimes and crimes against humanity is comparable to those committed by the Nazis. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Russian army has already murdered thousands of civilians in Ukraine, including children, and also kidnapped and tortured activists and local leaders, looted houses and raped Ukrainian women and girls. Mass war crimes and reports of looting and rape prove that Russian troops have no red lines or moral values whatsoever,” Ukraine stated.
While the Human Rights Watch has sent its representatives to Kyiv, Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions to document evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has decided to establish a special mechanism of justice in Ukraine to investigate and prosecute all crimes committed by the invaders. “This mechanism will bring together the efforts of national and international experts,” he said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the International Criminal Court and international organizations to send their missions to Bucha and other liberated towns and villages of the Kyiv region, to thoroughly collect all evidence of Russian war crimes in cooperation with Ukrainian law enforcement bodies. “This evidence will be used in courts, national and international, to bring all those who committed those atrocities to justice,” he said.
Ukraine pledged to activate all legal instruments to bring Russia and its citizens who are responsible for crimes against humanity to justice.
“Our country is not alone in these efforts. More than 40 countries have already supported the investigation of Russia’s war crimes and appealed to the International Criminal Court. A number of countries launched their own criminal investigations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russians on the territory of Ukraine. The international community should make everything possible to ensure that these war crimes will be the last in history and will never repeat. More needs to be done to stop Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Russian troops continue their atrocities in other temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine,” Kyiv stated.
“The only way to stop Russian crimes against humanity is to provide all necessary assistance for Ukraine to be able to kick Russians out as soon as possible. We urge partners to provide Ukraine with tanks, combat aircraft and heavy air defence systems. The sooner Ukraine liberates temporarily occupied territories, the more lives of innocent people will be saved,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry stated.
– global bihari bureau
