Western outrage has intensified over claims of civilian killings by Russian troops in Ukraine, with EU leaders denouncing “massacres”, “atrocities” and “possible genocide” as the Kremlin flatly rejected all responsibility.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the bloc was urgently working on a new round of sanctions against Moscow, adding: “Russian authorities are responsible for these atrocities, committed while they had effective control of the area.”
Amid an international outcry following the weekend discovery of a mass grave and corpses with their hands bound in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv, Borrell said the EU stood in solidarity with Ukraine during “sombre hours for the whole world”.
As the UN security council prepared to discuss Ukraine on Tuesday, the international body’s human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, told its human rights council that strikes and heavy shelling during Russia’s invasion had killed civilians in acts that may amount to war crimes.
The security council would not meet on Monday, as requested by Russia, to discuss what Moscow called Ukraine’s “heinous provocation”, said the British mission, which holds the presidency of the 15-member council for April.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on a visit to Bucha the atrocities would necessarily complicate peace talks due to restart by video on Monday. The killings were “war crimes and will be recognised by the world as genocide”, Zelenskiy said. “We know that thousands of people have been killed and tortured.”
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, called for an international investigation into what he termed a “genocide” carried out by Russian troops, saying it was essential to “find out the truth on the extent of Russian fascist crimes”.
Urging tougher western sanctions and an end to “negotiations with criminals”, Morawiecki said the “bloody massacres committed by Russian soldiers deserve to be called what they are. This is genocide, and it must be judged.”
The Polish leader criticised efforts over the past several weeks by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to keep lines of communication open with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, saying: “Nobody negotiated with Hitler.”
He told the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, that Berlin, which fears the economic consequences of suddenly halting imports of Russian gas, should not be listening to “German business leaders and German billionaires”, but “the voices of innocent women and children”.
Macron said on Monday there were very “clear clues pointing to war crimes” by Russian forces in Bucha and that new sanctions were needed, including on Russian oil and coal. Scholz said Putin and his supporters “will feel the consequences” and new sanctions would be agreed in the coming days.
Germany’s defence minister, Christine Lambrecht, raised the possibility of an end to gas imports, while the foreign minister of Italy – another country reliant on Russian gas – said it would not veto energy sanctions. Other European officials, including the Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said the EU “must respond strongly”.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said the west must do everything in its power to ensure those responsible for “these alleged cases of crimes against humanity, war crimes and – why not say it too – genocide” did not go unpunished.
The Kremlin, which has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, on Monday rejected all accusations related to the murder of civilians in Bucha, saying Ukrainian allegations should be treated with scepticism and suggesting images of corpses “do not correspond to reality”.
“We categorically reject all allegations,” said the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, claiming that Russian defence ministry experts had “identified signs of video fakes and various fakes” and asking international leaders not to “rush to sweeping accusations and at least listen to our arguments”.
Officials in Brussels said a fresh set of punitive measures against Moscow would be discussed this week, with EU foreign ministers due to consider the package either on the sidelines of a Nato meeting on Wednesday and Thursday or early next week.
Ukrainian authorities have said they are investigating possible war crimes by Russian forces after finding 421 bodies in civilian clothes, some with their hands tied, strewn around several towns outside the capital, including Bucha, after Moscow’s troops withdrew from the area around the capital.
Showing their partially covered bodies to reporters, Anton Herashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior ministry, said on Monday the head of one village, Motyzhyn, her husband and their son had all been shot and buried in a shallow grave.
“The occupiers suspected they were collaborating with our military, giving us locations of where to target our artillery,” Herashchenko said. “These scum tortured, slaughtered and killed the whole family. They will be held responsible for this.”
Zelenskiy on Sunday described Russian soldiers as “murderers”, “butchers” and “rapists”, and warned that “even worse things” could be found in other occupied regions.
The US said on Monday it would ask the UN general assembly to suspend Russia from the body’s human rights council after the atrocities. A two-thirds majority vote by the 193-member assembly in New York can suspend a state from the council for persistently committing gross and systematic violations of human rights.
Speaking in Bucharest on Monday, Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said: “Russia’s participation on the human rights council is a farce. And it is wrong, which is why we believe it is time the UN general assembly vote to remove them.”
The Kremlin said Russia’s diplomats at the UN would press on with their efforts to convene a security council meeting despite their first effort being blocked.
Europe’s worst conflict in decades, sparked by Russia’s invasion on 24 February, has already killed 20,000 people, according to Ukrainian estimates. The UN refugee agency said on Monday more than 4.2 million refugees had fled the country.
“The humanitarian needs are growing by the minute as more people flee the war in Ukraine,” the International Organization for Migration said, adding that in addition to Ukrainian refugees, nearly 205,500 non-Ukrainians living, studying or working in the country had left and nearly 6.5 million people were internally displaced.