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‘We are being exterminated’: Kremlin accused of war crimes after Bucha attack

Local officials report scores of civilians killed in Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel

Russian soldiers have withdrawn from Bucha, Ukraine, where scores of civilians were reportedly killed. Photograph: EPA/Atef Safadi

Jennifer Rankin
Daniel Boffey
Sun Apr 3 2022 - 20:18

Russia stands accused of “terrible” war crimes, as western leaders condemned the killings of unarmed civilians in Bucha and the surrounding areas of Kyiv in alleged atrocities that prompted fresh demands for tougher action against Moscow.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Kremlin-ordered attack on his country amounted to genocide, after local officials reported scores of civilians had been killed in the towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel near the capital.

Mr Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s refusal to be subdued to Russia was the reason “we are being destroyed and exterminated”, describing the war to the US network CBS as “the torture of the whole nation”.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dymtro Kuleba, said Russia was “worse than Isis”.

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Witnesses of alleged atrocities in Bucha told the Guardian that Russian soldiers, who have now withdrawn from the area, had fired on men fleeing the town and had killed civilians at will.

Taras Schevchenko (43) said Russian soldiers had refused to allow men to leave through a humanitarian corridor, instead shooting at them as they fled across an open field. Bodies, he said, were scattered on the pavements, with some of those killed having been “squashed by tanks – like animal skin rugs”.

Mr Shevchenko’s mother, Yevdokia (77), said she had witnessed an elderly man who had challenged a Russian soldier being shot dead as his wife stood next to him. “They shot him dead, and ordered the woman to leave,” she said. The accounts could not be independently verified.

‘Horrifying’

Reporters from Agence France-Presse saw at least 20 bodies, all in civilian clothing, strewn across a single street in the town of Bucha on Friday. One had his hands tied behind his back with a white cloth, and his Ukrainian passport left open beside his body. “All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told AFP, adding that a further 280 bodies had been buried in mass graves in the town.

The UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the killings added to evidence of Russian war crimes, while the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, expressed shock about the “terrible and horrifying” footage from Bucha. “Streets littered with bodies. Bodies buried in makeshift conditions. There is talk of women, children and the elderly among the victims,” Mr Scholz said.

The British ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, said it was clear that rape had been used as a weapon of war by Russian forces. She said: “Women raped in front of their kids, girls in front of their families, as a deliberate act of subjugation. Rape is a war crime.”

Further sanctions

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, described the killings at Bucha as “a punch to the gut” and joined western allies in vowing to document the atrocities to hold the perpetrators to account.

The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, said he was shocked by “haunting images of atrocities committed by [the] Russian army in liberated region of Kyiv”, adding that “further EU sanctions and support are on their way”.

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she was “appalled by reports of unspeakable horrors in areas from which Russia is withdrawing”. An independent investigation was urgently needed, she said, and “perpetrators of war crimes will be held accountable”.

Russia denied responsibility for the killing of civilians. Its defence ministry described the photos and videos as “another staged performance by the Kyiv regime”, echoing a similar claim made after the bombing of a children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol. – Guardian

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