Joe Biden has called for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes as Western leaders prepared a new round of economic sanctions against Moscow, amid global outrage over claims of killings of civilians by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The US President was responding to harrowing images circulating around the world after the discovery of a mass grave and bodies in civilian clothes, some with their hands tied, in the city of Bucha near Kyiv over the weekend.
“You may recall that I was criticized for calling Putin a war criminal.” Biden told reporters at the Fort McNair military post in Washington. “Well, the truth of the matter – we saw it in Bucha – he’s a war criminal.”
Visiting Bucha, some 30 km northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Ukrainian President Voloymir Zelenskyy went further and said the city had been the scene of war crimes “recognized by the world as genocide”.
“You stand here today and see what happened,” Zelenskyy, who wore a bulletproof vest on a rare trip outside of the capital, told reporters. “We know that thousands of people have been killed and tortured with their extremities cut off; Women raped, children killed.”
The extent of the murders is still unclear. Ukraine’s chief prosecutor Iryna Venediktova said 410 civilian bodies were recovered in the greater Kyiv area after Russian troops withdrew, while Bucha mayor Anatoly Fedoruk said the city buried 280 people in mass graves because their Cemeteries under attack.
In nearby Motyzhyn, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, Anton Herashchenko, showed reporters the partially covered bodies of the village head, her husband and son. They were shot and buried in a shallow grave, he said.
“The occupiers suspected that they were collaborating with our military and giving us locations to aim our artillery at,” Herashchenko said. “These scum tortured, slaughtered and killed the whole family. You will be held responsible for it.”
French President Emmanuel Macron called for “very clear action” against Moscow, including an embargo on Russian oil and coal, while EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was urgently working on a new round of sanctions and stood up in Solidarity with Ukraine in ‘dark hours for the whole world’.
Macron said there was “clear evidence of war crimes” in Bucha: “It was the Russian army that was there. We have informed the Ukrainian authorities that we are available to assist them with any investigation they are conducting. International justice must prevail.”
Germany on Monday expelled around 40 Russian diplomats in response to the Kremlin’s brutality, which Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described as “incredibly brutal” and “boundlessly destructive” and the “boundless will to annihilate” as well as the temporary takeover of the German subsidiary of the Russian gas giant Gazprom secure energy supply.
France later announced that it was also expelling a number of Russian diplomatic staff as their actions “contrary to our security interests”.
As the UN Security Council prepared to discuss Ukraine on Tuesday, its human rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet said airstrikes and heavy shelling during the Russian invasion killed civilians in acts that could amount to war crimes.
The British mission to the United Nations, which chairs the 15-member Security Council in April, said the council would not meet on Monday, as requested by Russia, to discuss what Moscow has described as a “vile provocation” by Ukraine .
The Kremlin on Monday again dismissed all allegations related to the killing of civilians in Bucha, saying Ukrainian allegations should be treated with skepticism and implying that images of dead bodies “do not correspond to reality”.
“We categorically deny all allegations,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who claimed that experts from the Russian Defense Ministry had “identified signs of various fakes” and urged international leaders “not to rush to blanket allegations and at least listen to our arguments.” “.
Biden said it was important for the international community to “gather all the details” to ensure the Russian president faces a war crimes trial, and described Putin as “brutal.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU is sending investigators to Ukraine to help local authorities document war crimes.
Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called for an international investigation into what he called the “genocide” committed by Russian troops, saying it was vital to “discover the truth about the extent of Russian fascist crimes”.
Calling for more and tougher Western sanctions and an end to “negotiations with criminals,” Morawiecki said the “bloody massacres being committed by Russian soldiers deserve to be called what they are. This is genocide and it must be judged.”
The Polish leader has slammed Macron’s efforts in recent weeks to keep lines of communication open with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, saying “no one negotiated with Hitler.” Business leaders and German billionaires” but “to the voices of innocent women and children”.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also 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 right away – genocide” do not go unpunished.
When asked if he agreed with the characterization of genocide, Biden replied, “No, I think it’s a war crime.” But the US President acknowledged that he would try to inflict more economic pain on Russia, saying, “I will add more sanctions.”
Scholz said new EU sanctions would be agreed in the coming days, while Italy’s foreign minister – another member like Germany reliant on Russian gas imports – said he would not veto energy embargoes.
But German finance minister Christian Lindner warned that it was too early to cut off Russian gas to Europe. “We have to cut all economic ties with Russia, but at the moment it is not possible to cut gas supplies,” he said. “We need some time.”
The worst conflict in Europe in decades, triggered by the Russian invasion on February 24, has already claimed the lives of 20,000 people, according to Ukrainian estimates. The UN refugee agency said on Monday that more than 4.2 million refugees had fled the country.
“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 the Ukrainian refugees, nearly 205,500 non-Ukrainians living in the country study or work, would have left the country almost 6.5 million people were internally displaced.
The US also said Monday it would ask the UN General Assembly to suspend Russia from the body’s Human Rights Council. “Russia’s participation in the Human Rights Council is a farce,” said Washington’s UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “It’s about time the UN General Assembly voted to remove them.”
Biden first described Putin as a “war criminal” in an impromptu exchange with a journalist on March 16, apparently surprising his own officials.