In that region, Mariupol, a port on the Sea of Azov that has seen some of the war’s greatest suffering, remained cut off. Russia has said it is directing troops to the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian forces for eight years. “This is not a battlefield, it’s a crime scene,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas tweeted.Īuthorities said they were documenting evidence to add to their case for prosecuting Russian officials for war crimes.Īs Russian forces retreated from the area around the capital, they pressed their sieges in other parts of the country. separately condemned what was being described and vowed that Russia would be held accountable. Officials in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia and the U.K. The gas and oil embargo must come immediately.” “That’s bloody money used to slaughter people. “Not a penny should go to Russia anymore,” Klitschko told German newspaper Bild. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko called on other nations to immediately end Russian gas imports, saying they were funding the killings. Over the weekend, AP journalists witnessed Ukrainian soldiers gingerly removing at least six bodies from a street in Bucha with cables in case the Russians had booby-trapped corpses with explosives before their withdrawal. The ministry charged said “not a single civilian has faced any violent action by the Russian military” in Bucha. “This is genocide,” Zelenskyy told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.īut Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the photos and videos of dead bodies “have been stage managed by the Kyiv regime for the Western media.” It noted that Bucha’s mayor did not mention any abuses a day after Russian troops left. He alleged that some of the women found dead had been raped before being killed and the Russians then burned the bodies. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said scores of residents were found slain on the streets of the suburbs of Irpin and Hostomel as well as Bucha, in what looked like a “scene from a horror movie.” “He put his hands up, and they shot him,” he said. The resident who refused to be identified said the man was killed as he left a home. The AP also saw two bodies, that of a man and a woman, wrapped in plastic that residents said they had covered and placed in a shaft until a proper funeral could be arranged. And another shot went slightly below the temple. “Then they shot off his left leg completely, with the boot. They hit him a bit above the heel, crushing the bone, and he fell down,” Herega said.
“He went to get some wood when all of a sudden they (Russians) started shooting. Hanna Herega, a resident of Bucha, said Russian troops shot a neighbor who had gone out to gather wood for heating.