LVIV, Ukraine (TNS) — President Joe Biden called for a war-crimes trial of Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Monday following the discovery of mass graves and streets littered with the bodies of dead civilians after the Russian retreat from suburbs around Kyiv.
“You saw what happened in Bucha,” Biden told reporters, referring to a town near Kyiv where numerous civilians were found dead, some bearing marks of torture or execution. The Ukrainian government said it has counted more than 400 civilian deaths so far in the suburbs of the capital city.
Biden previously branded Putin a “war criminal” in remarks March 17, but at that time the White House said he was speaking personally and not outlining a formal U.S. position. But six days later, the U.S. formally accused Russia of war crimes and said it was collecting evidence to help prove it.
“He is a war criminal,” Biden said of Putin on Monday, describing the longtime Russian leader as “brutal.” “But we have to gather information, we have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue to fight.”
In a video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that the most brutal images from newly liberated areas such as Bucha were still to come.
“After the expulsion of the occupiers, even worse things could be found there. Even more death and torture,” Zelenskyy said. “This is the nature of the Russian forces who came onto our land.”
Zelenskyy was photographed walking through charred rubble in Bucha on Monday as armed guards surrounded him. The president called on the media to come to the city to “show the world what happened here.”
Zelenskyy has described the scenes in Bucha, where photos and videos show mass graves and dead men and women face down on residential roads, as evidence of Russian “genocide” against Ukrainians.
He pledged to set up a special judicial mechanism, with the participation of international prosecutors and judges, to investigate alleged war atrocities. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted Monday that she had spoken with Zelenskyy about the European Union sending investigators to work with the Ukrainian government to “document war crimes.”
The horrific scenes outside Kyiv have generated calls for heavier sanctions on Moscow over the war, which is now in its 40th day.
“We will do everything to ensure that those who have perpetrated these war crimes do not go unpunished,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday, citing “alleged cases of [crimes against] humanity, war crimes and — why not say it, too — genocide.”
French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday described the gruesome images as “unbearable.” Macron, who said he supported additional sanctions, said it was “very clear” that Russia committed war crimes.
And a top government official in Germany, a primary importer of Russian gas and one of the strongest holdouts against cutting off such trade, signaled Sunday that it might change course and support a ban. “There has to be a response,” Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said. “Such crimes must not remain unanswered.”
More than half of Germany’s gas comes from Russia. Europe overall receives 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil from Russia.
Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday dismissed the scenes outside Kyiv as a “stage-managed anti-Russian provocation,” saying that Bucha’s mayor had not spoken of atrocities immediately after Russian troops left the area last week.
On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. would support a move to suspend Russia’s membership on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Thomas-Greenfield said the “images out of Bucha and devastation across Ukraine require us now to match our words with action.” The Security Council, chaired by Britain, denied Moscow’s request for a meeting on “provocation by Ukrainian radicals” in Bucha.
Although they were never able to enter central Kyiv, Russia said its forces had successfully completed the “first phase” of the war against Ukraine and were shifting east to the industrial region of Donbas and other areas that are home to pro-Russia separatist movements.
Russian troops appeared to have left several towns around the northeastern city of Chernihiv by Monday, according to regional Gov. Viacheslav Chaus.
Chaus, who said that about 70% of the city is destroyed, warned remaining residents not to get too comfortable. In a message posted to the Telegram app, he counseled patience as Ukrainian troops clear mines.
“We must avoid new victims,” he said.
Major aid routes into the city have been cut off for weeks, but Ukrainian news outlet RBK Ukraina reported a positive development: The 92-mile car route between Kyiv and Chernihiv had been partially reopened Monday morning.
Farther east in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, the local prosecutor’s office said Monday that shelling of residential buildings Sunday left seven people dead and 34 injured.
In Mariupol, a battered southern port city that has seen some of the worst publicly documented atrocities of the war, officials have continued to struggle to evacuate residents and send in aid.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Monday that evacuation buses were scheduled to arrive in Mariupol. But such efforts have repeatedly fallen apart, with Ukraine accusing Russian forces of failing to honor the pledge to allow safe corridors out of Mariupol.
The International Committee of the Red Cross also said Monday that one of its teams, which has tried to reach the city since Friday but ran into conditions that “made it impossible to proceed,” had still not made it in as of Sunday. It was unclear Monday if the group was able to enter the city, where only one-quarter of the prewar population of 430,000 remains.
New strikes were reported overnight on the historic Black Sea port of Odesa and the city of Mykolaiv, both in the south. No information was available on deaths or injuries.
The shifting terrain of war has left western parts of Ukraine in relative peace as local recovery efforts began even as war rages in the south and east.
The British Ministry of Defense warned Monday that Russian fighters were in a “consolidate and reorganize” phase as they planned more offensives in Donbas. The ministry said fighters from Wagner, a Russian paramilitary company, were staging in the area.
At the same time, the Ukrainian military said in a Monday report that a “hidden mobilization” was underway by Russians to regroup amid their pullback from some parts of Ukraine.
“The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation plan to engage around 60,000 people during the mobilization,” the report said.
According to the United Nations, at least 1,417 civilians have been killed since Russia launched the war Feb. 24. About a quarter of Ukraine’s population of 44 million has been displaced, with more than 4 million fleeing the country.
McDonnell reported from Lviv and Kaleem from London.
