Volodymyr Zelenskyy compared Russia to ISIS for its “war crimes” in Bucha during a fiery speech to the UN Security Council today.
The Ukrainian president said atrocities were being committed across the country, with women being raped and killed in front of their families and people being captured and deported to Russia and made into “slaves”.
He also accused the Security Council of failing to offer Ukraine any security and called for reform of the global body to ensure there are no more illegal invasions in the future.
The Ukrainian President said: “So where is the security that the Security Council has to guarantee? It’s not there. Although there is a Security Council and where is the peace?
“It is evident that the key world institution tasked with ensuring the coercion of peace aggressors simply cannot function effectively.”
He told of civilians being deliberately run over by tanks, tongues cut out and gang rapes committed by invading Kremlin troops – “the most horrific war crimes” since World War II.
People “were killed in their apartments, houses… Civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the street just for their amusement,” Zelenskyi told the council, including the Moscow envoy.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy compared Russia to ISIS for its “war crimes” in Bucha during a fiery speech to the UN Security Council today
The Ukrainian president said atrocities were being committed across the country, with women being raped and killed in front of their families
The war leader said he feared the Russians would turn his people into “silent slaves” as “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainians were deported to Russia.
He also urged reform of the UN because the current system of global security has failed, and urged world leaders to take action against Russia “immediately”.
Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was one of the greatest challenges to the international order.
Speaking to the Security Council in New York, the UN chief said there was mounting evidence of war crimes, rapes and sexual assaults by Putin’s forces.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (pictured) said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was one of the greatest challenges to the international order
He said, referring to the piles of civilian bodies near the capital Kyiv that surfaced this weekend: “I will never forget the horrific images of the civilians in Bucha.”
“The war in Ukraine must stop — now,” Guterres told the council after calling it “one of the greatest challenges of all time to the international order.”
“We need serious peace negotiations based on the principles of the United Nations Charter,” he said.
Guterres said the war is putting even more pressure on developing countries because more than 1.2 billion people are particularly vulnerable to rising food, energy and fertilizer costs.
“We are already seeing some countries moving from vulnerability to crisis and there are signs of serious social unrest,” he added.
The Mariupol Theater lies in ruins after Russian shelling in the besieged port city
Rosemary DiCarlo, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacekeeping Affairs, told the meeting “credible” claims that Russia had used cluster munitions indiscriminately on two dozen occasions in populated parts of Ukraine.
She said: “OHCHR has received credible allegations that Russian forces have used cluster munitions in populated areas on at least 24 occasions.”
She said the global organization was “deeply concerned by the continued use of long-range explosive weapons,” saying such weapons cause most civilian casualties in the war.
During a visit on Monday to Bucha, where AFP counted 20 bodies in a single street, he accused Russia of “war crimes” and attempted “genocide” and called on Europe to exert “strongest pressure”.
A mass grave containing the bodies of dozens of civilians was discovered at the site of the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints in Bucha
The NATO chief, meanwhile, warned that Russia was regrouping its forces to deploy to eastern and southern Ukraine for a “crucial phase of the war” and said more “atrocities” could come to light if the Russian Troops continue to retreat north.
“If and when they withdraw their troops and take over Ukrainian troops, I fear they will see more mass graves, more atrocities and more examples of war crimes,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Ukrainian officials said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv that have been recaptured by Russian forces and that a “torture chamber” has been discovered in the town of Bucha, from which some of the darkest details have emerged.
Police and other investigators walked the quiet streets of Bucha on Tuesday, taking notes on bodies that local residents showed them. Survivors hiding in their homes during the city’s months-long Russian occupation, many of them past middle age, wandered past charred tanks and cracked windows with plastic bags of food and other humanitarian aid. Red Cross workers checked intact houses.