United Nations/Lviv, Ukraine
Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that Russia must be held accountable over allegations of war atrocities as the West prepared to expand sanctions to include a ban on all new investments in Russia.
Six weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States and its allies will move to isolate the Russian economy further on Wednesday by also increasing curbs on financial institutions and state-owned enterprises, as well as targeting government officials and their families, a source familiar with the planned announcement said.
Graves with bodies of civilians, who according to local residents were killed by Russian soldiers, are seen, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Bucha, in Kyiv region, Ukraine on 4th April. The inscription on a cross reads: “Unknown”. PICTURE: Reuters/Vladyslav Musiienko
The European Union’s executive proposed extending sanctions to include a ban on coal imports from Russia as part of the West’s response to the discovery of bodies of civilians shot at close range in the northern Ukrainian town of Bucha retaken from Russian forces.
Between 150 and 300 bodies might be in a mass grave by a church in Bucha, Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said on Tuesday.
ROADSIDE BURIAL FOR LABOURER SHOT THROUGH HEAD IN UKRAINE’S BUCHA
Sobbing uncontrollably, Serhii Lahovskyi nuzzles against the shrouded corpse of his closest childhood friend, who disappeared when Russian troops occupied the Ukrainian town of Bucha near Kyiv and was found shot through the head and dumped in a stairwell.
The labourer’s eyes cloudy and half open, black and crimson streaks of blood caked on his face and snaking down to his lips from an exit wound that cracked his skull, Igor Litvinenko had been shot through the mouth at very close range. He was found by local residents just days before his 30th birthday.
Serhii Lahovskyi, 26, and other residents carry the body of Ihor Lytvynenko, who according to residents was killed by Russian Soldiers, after they found him beside a building’s basement, to bury him at the garden of residential building, amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Bucha, Ukraine, on 5th April, 2022. PICTURE: Reuters/Zohra Bensemra.
Dried clots of blood filled his nostrils. And his torso was covered with bright red welts, which Lahovskyi believes resulted from a beating. He was dumped together with another man who was found mutilated. His wife and other residents said the man who was mutilated had been taken prisoner by Russian troops who invaded Ukraine.
Reuters cannot independently verify the details of their accounts.
Litvinenko had been visiting his mother to bring her food when he disappeared.
“Why did these animals shoot him so?” Lahovskyi said on Tuesday, his eyes wide and reddened, gesturing with his hand to say they had been best friends since they were knee-high. “This is not Russia, this is a monster.”
“Just point-blank. Why is it needed? Tell me please.”
He and fellow residents in a housing complex in the ravaged town of Bucha, where Reuters has found a trail of what officials say are extra-judicial killings since Russian troops pulled back last week, grabbed shovels and dug a shallow grave on a grass verge by one housing block.
Then they used a carpet to carry the remains, placing him in the ditch, folding it over him and covering him with wooden boards, before shoveling earth on top.
Panting heavily after digging the grave, shaking his head in dismay, local locksmith and odd-job man Urii Churachenko bent down and placed two cigarettes in the earth as a token for his friend.
“I have known him since childhood,” he said. “We have lived through everything together. He is our colleague, our brother-in-arms. Let them burn in hell. That’s it.”
Reuters has seen at least four victims shot through the head in Bucha, one with their hands tied behind their back.
Residents have recounted cases of several others slain, some shot through their eyes and one apparently beaten to death and mutilated.
Officials say they have found more than 300 dead so far.
Ukrainian officials say Russia has committed genocide and have called for an investigation by the International Criminal Court.
The Kremlin dismisses the allegations as propaganda. Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Tuesday that Russian troops are not targeting civilians, dismissing accusations of abuse as lies. He said that while Bucha was under Russian control “not a single civilian suffered from any kind of violence.”
In Bucha, Liudmyla Verhinska cried as she recounted how she found her 32-year-old son was slain, shot through the eye. He worked in anti-terrorism unit and is now buried on another small patch of grass near the housing complex.
“He went just to take out the trash and he was shot. After seven days, I found him,” she said. “And today I found his friend…What else to tell you?”
– SIMON GARDNER, Bucha, Ukraine; Additional reporting by ZOHRA BENSEMRA and IVAN LUBYSH-KIRDEY/Reuters
Zelenskiy questioned the value of the 15-member Security Council, which has been unable to take any action over Russia’s 24th February invasion because permanent member Moscow is a veto power, along with the United States, France, Britain and China.
“We are dealing with a state that turns its veto at the UN Security Council into the right to [cause] death,” Zelenskiy said in a live video address from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, calling for action to reform the world body. “Russia wants to turn Ukraine into silent slaves,” he said.
Responding to Zelenskiy, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council that Russian troops were not targeting civilians, dismissing accusations of abuse as lies.
Moscow has said the deaths in Bucha were a “monstrous forgery” staged by the West to discredit it.
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said responsible world powers and global leaders need to “show backbone – and stand up to Russia’s dangerous and unprovoked threat against Ukraine and the world”.
Russia says it launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine to demilitarize and “denazify” a country that President Vladimir Putin regards as an illegitimate state. The Kremlin’s position is rejected by Ukraine, a parliamentary democracy, and the West as a pretext for an unprovoked invasion.
The ambassador for Russia’s strategic partner China told the Security Council the reports and images showing civilian deaths in Bucha were “very disturbing” but added that the circumstances should be verified and any accusations should be based on facts.
Ambassador Zhang Jun also urged the United States, NATO and the EU to pursue dialogue with Russia rather than further sanctions he said were not effective in solving the crisis.
Casting sanctions net wider
The new economic restrictions will “degrade key instruments of Russian state power, impose acute and immediate economic harm on Russia, and hold accountable the Russian kleptocracy that funds and supports Putin’s war,” the source said.
The actions being teed up would be taken in “lockstep” with other Group of Seven advanced economies and the European Union.
The proposed EU sanctions, which the bloc’s 27 member states must approve, would bar Russian imports worth €9 billion and exports to Russia worth €10 billion, including semiconductors and computers, and stop Russian ships entering EU ports.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was working on banning oil imports too.
“We all saw the gruesome pictures from Bucha and other areas from which Russian troops have recently left. These atrocities cannot and will not be left unanswered,” she said on Twitter.
Since Russia shifted its offensive to the south and east of Ukraine from the north, where it failed to capture any major cities, grim images have emerged from Bucha near Kyiv, including a mass grave and bodies with their hands bound in the street.
The apparent atrocities have prompted calls for tougher action against Moscow and an international investigation.
The sanctions announced since the invasion were more severe than any ever imposed on a world power but Ukraine says the West needs to do much more to starve Moscow’s military.
“Every euro, every cent that you receive from Russia or that you send to Russia has blood, it is bloody money and the blood of this money is Ukrainian blood, the blood of Ukrainian people,” Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko told a conference in Geneva via video link.
Europe, which obtains about a third of its natural gas from Russia, has been wary of the economic impact a total ban on Russian energy – which Ukraine maintains is vital to securing a peace deal – would bring.
An EU ban on Russian coal would be worth around €4 billion a year, von der Leyen said – tiny in comparison with last year’s €100 billion in oil and gas imports from Russia.
But signalling strengthening EU resolve, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the coal ban was the first step towards an embargo on all fossil fuel imports from Russia.
The Ukraine war has killed thousands, sent millions fleeing and trapped many thousands in besieged and shattered towns and cities.
Satellite images
At the weekend, Reuters reporters in Bucha saw several bodies apparently shot at close range, along with makeshift burials and a mass grave, but could not independently verify the number of dead or who was responsible.
Satellite images taken in March and provided to Reuters by US company Maxar Technologies showed bodies of civilians on a street in Bucha, which was occupied by Russian forces until about March 30, undercutting Kremlin claims that the scenes were staged.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West on Tuesday of fuelling “hysteria” over alleged Russian war crimes so as to derail negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv. He gave no evidence for this. The talks have yielded no deal on a joint text that can be presented to the two nations’ leaders.
– Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux.
