Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country was defending “a person’s ability to live in the modern world” by fighting Russian invaders.
Zelenskyy, 44, made the statement in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, scheduled to air Sunday.
The embattled president said he had just visited Bucha, a northern Kyiv suburb where Russian soldiers are said to have butchered civilians in a series of apparent war crimes earlier this week.
“Death. Just death,” Zelensky told reporter Scott Pelley of the atrocities he witnessed.
Investigators have been collecting bodies — many with point-blank gunshot wounds or severe burns, some with their hands still bound — across Bucha, where the dead were found in mass graves and scattered about the city’s streets.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in April surveys the site of a recent battle in Bucha, Ukraine. 4, 2022.AP
On April 8, 2022, criminals are at the mass grave in Bucha, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, where bodies of civilians killed by the Russian army are seen. ZUMAPRESS.com
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was fighting for basic human rights and not “Western values” as Russia has claimed to justify its invasion of the country.
“We defend a person’s ability to live in the modern world. They say we defend western values. I always say what are western values? Someone living in the United States or Europe doesn’t like kids either? Don’t they want their children to study, don’t they want their grandfather to live 100 years? We have the same values,” Zelenskyi said from a government building in Kyiv.
A woman walks amid destruction on a street in the city of Bucha, Ukraine, after the Ukrainian army secured the area April 8, 2022. Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
“We defend the right to life. I never thought that this right is so expensive. These are human values. So that Russia doesn’t decide what we should do and how I use my rights. This right was given to me by God and my parents.”
A preview of the interview was released by the network on Friday, as at least 52 Ukrainian civilians were killed in a rocket attack on a Kramatorsk train station, where thousands, including women and children, had gathered to flee eastern Ukraine.