President of Ukraine Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy in a video address said Russian soldiers who killed and tortured civilians were responsible for concentrated evil.”
Even if you raised looters, how did they also become butchers? he said. You couldn’t overlook that they are deprived of everything human. No soul. No heart. They killed deliberately and with pleasure.
Zelenskyy said his government would take steps to create a special justice mechanism to investigate every crime committed by the Russian forces in Ukraine Bodies with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture lay scattered in a city on the outskirts of Kyiv after Russian soldiers withdrew from the area.
Ukrainian authorities accused the departing forces on Sunday of committing war crimes and leaving behind a scene from a horror movie.
As images of the bodies emerged from Bucha, European leaders condemned the atrocities and called for tougher sanctions against Moscow. In a sign of how the horrific reports shook many leaders, Germany’s defense minister even suggested that the European Union consider banning Russian gas imports.
Ukrainian officials said the bodies of 410 civilians were found in Kyiv-area towns that were recently retaken from Russian forces.
A resident, who refused to give his name out of fear for his safety, said that Russian troops went building to building and took people out of the basements where they were hiding, checking their phones for any evidence of anti-Russian activity before taking them away or shooting them.
Some 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.
Zelenskyy also appeared in a video message at 3rd April Grammy Awards, contrasting the lives of those attending the award ceremony in Las Vegas with the lives of musicians in his battered homeland.
Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals, even to those who can’t hear them, he said. But the music will break through anyway.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that photos and videos of dead bodies have been stage managed by the Kyiv regime for the Western media.
Some European leaders said the killings in the Kyiv area amounted to war crimes. The U.S. has previously said that it believes Russia has committed war crimes, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called images of what happened near Kyiv a punch to the gut on CNN’s State of the Union.
It is a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on the same show. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko called on nations to immediately end Russian gas imports, saying they were funding the killings.
Russia provides 40% of Europe’s gas and 25% of its oil, and until now many EU nations have resisted calls to scale back or fully end reliance on Russian fossil fuels. Giving them up would mean even higher prices at the pump and higher utility bills, potentially creating an energy crisis and a recession. The U.S. has previously announced a ban on Russian oil, but it imports only a small share of Russia’s oil exports and doesn’t buy any of its natural gas.
