Russia-Ukraine war
Killing of Ukrainian civilians could bring new sanctions
Police and other investigators walked the silent streets of ruined towns around Ukraine’s capital, documenting widespread killings of unarmed civilians and other alleged war crimes by Russian forces that could draw tough new Western sanctions as soon as Wednesday.
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy kept up demands for war-crimes trials for Russian troops and their leaders, he and others increasingly warn that the Russians are regrouping for a new assault on Ukraine’s east and south.
So far, Ukrainian forces are holding back Russian troops trying to push into the country’s east, but they remain outnumbered in both troops and equipment, Zelenskyy said in a video address to his country late Tuesday.
“But we don’t have a choice — the fate of our land and of our people is being decided,” he said. “We know what we are fighting for. And we will do everything to win.”
Over the past few days, a global outcry erupted over grisly images of what appeared to be intentional killings of civilians in Bucha and other towns before Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv. The evidence has led Western nations to expel scores of Moscow’s diplomats and propose further sanctions.
The U.S., in coordination with the European Union and Group of Seven big economies, is expected to roll out more sanctions Wednesday, including a ban on all new investment in Russia, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the upcoming announcement.
Also, the EU’s executive branch proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia. It would be the first time the 27-nation bloc has sanctioned the country’s lucrative energy industry over the war. The coal imports amount to an estimated 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) per year.
Zelenskyy spoke by video Tuesday to the U.N. Security Council about the suspected executions in the 6-week-old invasion that has seen countless other civilians killed by Russian shelling and airstrikes on cities and towns.
He said civilians in towns around Kyiv had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.
Zelenskyy said that both those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders “must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes” in front of a tribunal similar to the one established at Nuremberg after World War II.
Moscow’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said that while Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person has suffered from any violent action.” Reiterating what the Kremlin has contended for days, he said that video footage of bodies in the streets was “a crude forgery” staged by the Ukrainians.
Read: Zelenskyy at the UN accuses Russian military of war crimes
“You only saw what they showed you,” he said. “The only ones who would fall for this are Western dilettantes.”
As Zelenskyy spoke to the diplomats, survivors of the monthlong Russian occupation showed investigators bodies of townspeople allegedly shot by Russian troops.
Police and other investigators walked the still largely empty streets of Bucha, where dogs wandered among ruined buildings and burned military vehicles. Officials snapped photos of the corpses before gathering up some of them.
Survivors who hid in their homes during the occupation, many of them beyond middle age, wandered past charred tanks and jagged window panes with plastic bags of food and other humanitarian aid. Red Cross workers checked in on intact homes.
Associated Press journalists in Bucha have counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who told of witnessing atrocities. Also, high-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, during the time that Russian forces were in the town.
The dead in Bucha included a pile of six charred bodies, as witnessed by AP journalists. It was not clear who they were or under what circumstances they died. One body was probably that of a child, said Andrii Nebytov, head of police in the Kyiv region.
Many of the dead seen by AP journalists appeared to have been shot at close range, and some had their hands bound or their flesh burned.
The AP and the PBS series “Frontline” have jointly verified at least 90 incidents during the war that appear to violate international law. The War Crimes Watch Ukraine project is looking into apparent targeted attacks as well as indiscriminate ones.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the images from Bucha revealed “not the random act of a rogue unit” but “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities.” He said the reports of atrocities were “more than credible.”
“Only non-humans are capable of this,” said Angelica Chernomor, a refugee from Kyiv who crossed into Poland with her two children and saw the photos from Bucha. “Even if people live under a totalitarian regime, they must retain feelings, dignity, but they do not.”
Chernomor is among the more than 4 million Ukrainians who have fled the country in the wake of the Feb. 24 invasion.
Russia has rejected similar accusations of atrocities in the past by accusing its enemies of forging photos and video and using so-called crisis actors.
The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court at The Hague opened an investigation a month ago into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
Read: US Oks $100m transfer of missiles to Ukraine
Elsewhere in Ukraine, in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, a 25-year-old, Dmitriy Yevtushkov, searched the rubble of apartment buildings and found that only a photo album remained from his family’s home.
In the besieged southern city of Mykolaiv, a passerby stopped briefly to look at the bright blossoms of a shattered flower stand lying among bloodstains, the legacy of a Russian shell that killed nine in the
center of the city earlier this week. The onlooker sketched out the sign of the cross in the air, and moved on.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, meanwhile, warned that in pulling back from the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military is regrouping its forces in order to deploy them to eastern and southern Ukraine for a “crucial phase of the war.” Russia’s stated goal currently is control of the Donbas, the largely Russian-speaking industrial region in the east that includes the shattered port city of Mariupol.
“Moscow is not giving up its ambitions in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.
While both Ukrainian and Russian representatives sent optimistic signals following their latest round of talks a week ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow will not accept a Ukrainian demand that a prospective peace deal include an immediate pullout of troops followed by a Ukrainian referendum on the agreement.
Zelenskyy at the UN accuses Russian military of war crimes
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of gruesome atrocities in Ukraine and told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that those responsible should immediately be brought up on war crimes charges in front of a tribunal like the one established at Nuremberg after World War II.
Over the past few days, grisly images of what appeared to be intentional killings of civilians carried out by Russian forces in Bucha and other towns before they withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv have caused a global outcry and led Western nations to expel scores of Moscow’s diplomats and propose further sanctions, including a ban on coal imports from Russia.
Zelenskyy, speaking via video from Ukraine to U.N. diplomats, said that civilians had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.
“They cut off limbs, cut their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children,” he said. He asserted that people’s tongues were pulled out “only because their aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”
Zelenskyy said that both those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders “must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes” in front of a tribunal similar to what was used in postwar Germany.
Read: Ukraine says Russia preparing offensive in southeast
Moscow’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said that while Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person has suffered from any violent action.” Reiterating what the Kremlin has contended for days, he said that video footage of bodies in the streets was “a crude forgery” staged by the Ukrainians.
“You only saw what they showed you,” he said. “The only ones who would fall for this are Western dilettantes.”
As Zelenskyy spoke to the diplomats, survivors of the monthlong Russian occupation took investigators to body after body of townspeople allegedly shot down by troops. Others simply surveyed the destruction.
In Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, 25-year-old, Dmitriy Yevtushkov searched the rubble of apartment buildings and found that only a photo album remained from his family’s home. In the besieged southern city of Mykolaiv, a passerby stopped briefly to look at the bright blossoms of a shattered flower stand lying among bloodstains, the legacy of a Russian shell that killed nine. The onlooker sketched out the sign of the cross in the air, and moved on.
Associated Press journalists in Bucha have counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who told of witnessing atrocities. Also, high-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, during the time that Russian forces were in the town.
7.1mn people displaced by war in Ukraine: IOM
Over 7.1 million people have been internally displaced since the invasion of Ukraine, according to the second Ukraine Internal Displacement Report issued by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
This represents a 10 per cent increase in number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine since the first round of the survey on 16 March.
Also read: Ukraine says Russia preparing offensive in southeast
IOM conducted its second survey between 24 March and 1 April to gather insights into internal displacement and mobility, and assess needs in Ukraine to inform the overall humanitarian response.
“People continue to flee their homes because of war, and the humanitarian needs on the ground continue to soar,” said IOM Director General António Vitorino.
“Humanitarian corridors are urgently needed to allow the safe evacuation of civilians and ensure the safe transportation and delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid in order to rapidly assist those internally displaced.”
According to the survey, more than 50 per cent of displaced households have children, 57 per cent include elderly members, and 30 per cent have people with chronic illnesses.
Within the first month of the war, the income of displaced households dropped sharply.
While only 13 per cent of now displaced households reported a monthly income under 5,000 Ukrainian hryvnias (USD 170) prior to 24 February 2022, currently 61 per cent of them indicate that their household income has been lower than 5,000 hryvnias since the start of the war.
Over one third of displaced households indicate that they have had no income in the last month.
Cash and financial support, transportation, food, shelter, and hygiene items are among the most pressing needs for displaced people.
Access to medicines and health services remains the second most pressing need for both those displaced, and those staying at their places of residence.
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IOM teams on the ground continue to provide essential humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons and host communities, but more communities in need remain trapped.
Tangible support provided so far has included food, non-food and hygiene items, cash, mental health and psychosocial support, as well as information campaigns to help prevent human trafficking and sexual exploitation and abuse.
The cessation of hostilities in Ukraine is of utmost importance, to allow for humanitarian access to all affected populations.
World Bank says war shocks to drag on Asian economies
Disruptions to supplies of commodities, financial strains and higher prices are among the impacts of the war in Ukraine that will slow economies in Asia in coming months, the World Bank says in a report released Tuesday.
The report forecasts slower growth and rising poverty in the Asia-Pacific region this year as “multiple shocks” compound troubles for people and for businesses.
Growth for the region is estimated at 5%, down from the original forecast of 5.4%. The “low case” scenario foresees growth dipping to 4%, it said. The region saw a rebound to 7.2% growth in 2021 after many economies experienced downturns with the onset of the pandemic.
Also read: World Bank projects developing East Asia Pacific to grow 5 pct in 2022
The World Bank anticipates that China, the region’s largest economy, will expand at a 5% annual pace, much slower than the 8.1% growth of 2021.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has helped drive up prices for oil, gas and other commodities, eating into household purchasing power and burdening businesses and governments that already are contending with unusually high levels of debt due to the pandemic, the report said.
The development lending institution urged governments to lift restrictions on trade and services to take advantage of more opportunities for trade and to end fossil fuel subsidies to encourage adoption of more green energy technologies.
“The succession of shocks means that the growing economic pain of the people will have to face the shrinking financial capacity of their governments,” said the World Bank's East Asia and Pacific Chief Economist Aaditya Mattoo. “A combination of fiscal, financial and trade reforms could mitigate risks, revive growth and reduce poverty.”
The report pointed to three main potential shocks for the region: the war, changing monetary policy in the U.S. and some other countries and a slowdown in China.
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While rising interest rates make sense for cooling the U.S. economy and curbing inflation, much of Asia lags behind in its recovery from the pandemic. Countries like Malaysia may suffer outflows of currency and other financial repercussions from those changing policies, it said.
Meanwhile, China's already slowing economy could falter as outbreaks of COVID-19 provoke lockdowns like the one now in place in Shanghai, the country's biggest megacity. That is likely to affect many Asian countries whose trade relies on demand from China.
“These shocks are likely to magnify existing post-COVID difficulties," the report said. The 8 million households whose members fell back into poverty during the pandemic, “will see real incomes shrink even further as prices soar."
The report noted that regional economies fared better during the 2021 Delta variant waves of coronavirus than in the initial months of the pandemic in 2020, largely because fewer restrictions were imposed and widespread vaccinations helped limit the severity of the outbreaks.
On average, countries with a 1 percentage point higher vaccination rate had higher growth, it said.
Zelenskyy to address UN amid outrage over civilian deaths
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy planned to speak Tuesday to U.N. Security Council diplomats outraged by growing evidence that Russian forces have deliberated killed civilians, many of them shot in yards, streets and homes, and their bodies left in the open.
The withdrawal of Russian troops from towns around Ukraine’s capital revealed the corpses, which led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin, especially a cutoff of fuel imports from Russia. Germany and France reacted by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they were spies. U.S. President Joe Biden said Russian leader Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes.
“This guy is brutal, and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous,” Biden said, referring to the town northwest of the capital that was the scene of some of the horrors.
The discovery of bodies in Bucha was expected to be “front and center” at the Security Council session, said Barbara Woodward, the U.N. ambassador for the United Kingdom, which currently holds the council presidency.
Associated Press journalists in Bucha counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and apparently without weapons, many shot at close range, and some with their hands bound or their flesh burned.
Read: Russia faces global outrage over bodies in Ukraine’s streets
After touring neighborhoods of Bucha and speaking to hungry survivors lining up for bread, Zelenskyy pledged in a video address that Ukraine would work with the European Union and the International Criminal Court to identify Russian fighters involved in any atrocities.
“The time will come when every Russian will learn the whole truth about who among their fellow citizens killed, who gave orders, who turned a blind eye to the murders,” he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the scenes outside Kyiv as a “stage-managed anti-Russian provocation.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the images contained “signs of video forgery and various fakes.”
Russia has similarly rejected previous allegations of atrocities as fabrications on Ukraine’s part.
Ukrainian officials said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv that were recaptured from Russian forces in recent days.
The Ukrainian prosecutor-general’s office described one room discovered in Bucha as a “torture chamber.” In a statement, it said the bodies of five men with their hands bound were found in the basement of a children’s sanatorium where civilians were tortured and killed.
The bodies seen by AP journalists in Bucha included at least 13 in and around a building that local people said Russian troops used as a base. Three other bodies were found in a stairwell, and a group of six were burned together.
The dead witnessed by the news agency’s journalists also included bodies wrapped in black plastic, piled on one end of a mass grave in a Bucha churchyard. Many of those victims had been shot in cars or killed in explosions trying to flee the city. With the morgue full and the cemetery impossible to reach, the churchyard was the only place to keep the dead, Father Andrii Galavin said.
Tanya Nedashkivs’ka said she buried her husband in a garden outside their apartment building after he was detained by Russian troops. His body was one of those left heaped in a stairwell.
“Please, I am begging you, do something!” she said. “It’s me talking, a Ukrainian woman, a Ukrainian woman, a mother of two kids and one grandchild. For all the wives and mothers, make peace on Earth so no one ever grieves again.”
Read: Ukraine’s leader asks help in Grammys video
Another Bucha resident, Volodymyr Pilhutskyi, said his neighbor Pavlo Vlasenko was taken away by Russian soldiers because the military-style pants he was wearing and the uniforms that Vlasenko said belonged to his security guard son appeared suspicious. When Vlasenko’s body was later found, it had burn marks from a flamethrower, his neighbor said.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, insisted Monday at a news conference that during the time that Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person has suffered from any violent action.”
However, high-resolution satellite imagery by commercial provider Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies have been lying in the open for weeks, during the time that Russian forces were in Bucha. The New York Times first reported on the satellite images showing the dead.
Western and Ukrainian leaders have accused Russia of war crimes before, and the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor has already opened an investigation. But the latest reports ratcheted up the condemnation.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the images from Bucha reveal the “unbelievable brutality of the Russian leadership and those who follow its propaganda.” And French President Emmanuel Macron said there is “clear evidence of war crimes” in Bucha that demand new punitive measures.
“I’m in favor of a new round of sanctions and in particular on coal and gasoline. We need to act,” he said on France-Inter radio.
Though united in outrage, the European allies appeared split on how to respond. While Poland urged Europe to quickly wean itself off Russian energy, Germany said it would stick with a gradual approach of phasing out coal and oil imports over the next several months.
Russia had withdrawn many of its forces from the capital area after being thwarted in its bid to swiftly capture Kyiv.
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It has instead poured troops and mercenaries into the country’s east in a stepped-up bid to gain control of the Donbas, the largely Russian-speaking industrial region that includes the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting and worst suffering of the war.
About two-thirds of the Russian troops around Kyiv have left and are either in Belarus or on their way there, probably getting more supplies and reinforcements, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment.
More than 1,500 civilians were able to escape Mariupol on Monday, using the dwindling number of private vehicles available to get out, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
But amid the fighting, a Red Cross-accompanied convoy of buses that has been thwarted for days on end in a bid to deliver supplies and evacuate residents was again unable to get inside the city, Vereshchuk said.
Elsewhere, Russian shelling killed 11 people in the southern city of Mykolaiv, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said in a video message on social media.
Zelenskyy appealed for more weaponry as Russia prepares new offensives.
“If we had already got what we needed — all these planes, tanks, artillery, anti-missile and anti-ship weapons — we could have saved thousands of people,” he said.
Ukraine’s leader asks help in Grammys video
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appeared in a video at the Grammy Awards asking for support in telling the story of Ukraine’s invasion by Russia.
During the pre-recorded message that aired on the show Sunday night, he spoke in English, likening the attack to a deadly silence threatening to extinguish the dreams and lives of the Ukrainian people, including children.
Read: Drug shortages persist in Russia after start of Ukraine war
In his words: “Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals, even to those who can’t hear them. But the music will break through anyway.”
Drug shortages persist in Russia after start of Ukraine war
First came the warnings, in messages among friends and families and on social media, to stock up on vital drugs in Russia before supplies were affected by crippling Western sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
Then, some drugs indeed became harder to find at pharmacies in Moscow and other cities.
“Not a single pharmacy in the city has it now,” a resident of Kazan told The Associated Press in late March about a blood thinner her father needs.
Experts and health authorities in Russia say the drug shortages are temporary — due to panic- buying and logistical difficulties for suppliers from the sanctions — but some remain worried that high-quality medicines will keep disappearing in the Russian market.
“Most likely there will be shortages. How catastrophic it will be, I don’t know,” said Dr. Alexey Erlikh, head of the cardiac intensive care unit in Moscow Hospital No. 29, and a professor at the Moscow-based Pirogov Medical University.
Reports that Russians could not find certain medications in pharmacies started surfacing in early March, shortly after Moscow unleashed a war on Ukraine, and sweeping sanctions left Russia increasingly isolated from the rest of the world.
Patient’s Monitor, a patients’ rights group in the Russian region of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea, began getting complaints in the second week of March.
Ziyautdin Uvaysov, head of the group, told AP he personally checked with several state-run pharmacies in the region on the availability of 10 most-wanted medications and “they didn’t have a large number of these.”
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Uvaysov added that when he asked about when supplies would be restocked, the pharmacies replied that “there aren’t any and it’s unclear when there will be.”
Despite assurances from authorities that hoarding of supplies was to blame for the quickly emptying shelves, reports about shortages persisted throughout March.
Vrachi.Rf, one of Russia’s biggest online communities for medical workers, surveyed more than 3,000 doctors in mid-March, and they said they had run into shortages of more than 80 medications: anti-inflammatory, gastrointestinal, antiepileptic and anticonvulsant drugs, as well as antidepressants and antipsychotics.
About a dozen people contacted by the AP in different cities in late March said they had spent days searching for certain thyroid medications, types of insulin or even a popular pain-relieving syrup for children. Some said they were unable to find them at all.
“Patients I treat have lost some blood pressure medications,” Erlikh said. “And some doctors I know are reporting problems with certain very expensive, very important medications (used in) certain surgical procedures.”
Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko has repeatedly given assurances that drug availability is not a problem in the country and has blamed any shortages on panic-buying. He said the demand for certain drugs has spiked tenfold in recent weeks, and he has urged Russians not to hoard the medications.
Experts agree that panic-buying has played a role in creating drug shortages.
“People rushed to stock up, and in some cases, supplies that were supposed to last a year or a year and a half were bought out within a month,” Nikolay Bespalov, development director of the RNC Pharma analytical company, told AP.
Bespalov also pointed to logistical problems that occurred early in the crisis. While major Western pharmaceutical companies pledged not to withdraw vital medications from the Russian market, sanctions cut Russia’s key banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system, hindering international payments. Dozens of countries halted air traffic with Russia, disrupting supply chains.
The expert stressed the logistical issues have been largely resolved, but panic-buying, prompted by fears that foreign companies will halt supplies, may continue fueling shortages for some time.
“Clearly, until the emotions calm down, it will continue,” Bespalov said.
Local news sites — from Vladimir, just east of Moscow, to the Kemerovo region in Siberia — reported shortages of various medications in the final days of March amid continued panic-buying.
Russia’s health care watchdog Roszdravnadzor, however, said in a statement Friday that “the situation on the drug market is gradually returning to normal, panic-buying of pharmaceuticals is decreasing.”
Erlikh, the cardiologist, pointed to already-existing problems with quality medications in Russia, which according to some estimates imports up to 40% of its drugs.
Read: Ukraine accuses Russia of massacre, city strewn with bodies
After authorities launched an import substitution policy to counter sanctions over the 2014 annexation of Crimea and to promote its own medications over foreign-made ones, shortages of certain imported drugs became a problem.
The policy outlined a wide range of preferences to Russian businesses and eventually made it unprofitable for foreign pharmaceutical companies to supply some of their expensive, high-quality drugs to Russia.
In 2015, state procurement of drugs for hospitals and state-funded clinics, which account for up to 80% of Russia’s pharmaceutical market, became subject to the “three’s a crowd” rule, which excluded foreign businesses if at least two Russian companies were bidding for a contract.
The government also kept adding more drugs to the “vital medicines” list -- a registry of over 800 essential drugs, for which the authorities set obligatory — and relatively low — prices. Companies can apply for changing the set price once a year, but the process is long, heavily bureaucratic and doesn’t lead to a guaranteed result.
“We have already been gradually losing one important original medication after another. Generics are taking their place, and while there are some rather good ones made in Europe, there are also some dubious ones made in Russia,” Erlikh said.
“Of course, when there is no original medication, a generic is better than nothing. But it is a situation of (deliberately) lowering the bar, it is not a good way to live,” he added.
Ukraine documents alleged atrocities by retreating Russians
Ukrainian troops are finding brutalized bodies and widespread destruction in suburbs of the capital as Russian soldiers withdraw and Moscow focuses its attacks elsewhere, including missile strikes Sunday that targeted fuel and ammunition supplies in southern and eastern Ukraine.
Associated Press journalists in Bucha, a small city northwest of Kyiv, saw the bodies of at least nine people in civilian clothes who appeared to have been killed at close range. At least two had their hands tied behind their backs. The AP also saw two bodies wrapped in plastic, bound with tape and thrown into a ditch.
Authorities said they were documenting evidence as Ukraine's military reclaims territory and discovers indications of execution-style slayings to add to their case for for prosecuting Russian officials for war crimes.
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said scores of killed civilians were found on the streets of Bucha and the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin and Hostomel in what looked like a “scene from a horror movie.”
Arestovych said some people were shot in the head and had their hands bound, and some bodies showed signs of torture, rape and burning.
Also read: Ukraine's Odesa comes under airstrike
The capital city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said civilians were “shot with joined hands” and told German newspaper Bild that “what happened in Bucha and other suburbs of Kyiv can only be described as genocide.”
A day earlier, AP journalists witnessed Ukrainian soldiers gingerly removing at least six bodies from a street in Bucha with cables in case the Russians had booby-trapped corpses with explosives before their withdrawal. Local residents said the dead people were civilians killed without provocation, a claim that could not be independently verified.
Klitschko called on other nations to immediately end Russian gas imports, saying they were funding the invasion of Ukraine, now in its 39th day.
“Not a penny should go to Russia anymore. That's bloody money used to slaughter people. The gas and oil embargo must come immediately,” the mayor said.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, wrote on Twitter that he was shocked by the “haunting images of atrocities committed by Russian army" in the capital region. The EU and non-governmental organizations were assisting in the effort to preserve evidence of war crimes, according to Michel, who promised “further EU sanctions” against Russia.
On Sunday morning, Russian forces launched an airstrike on the Black Sea port of Odesa, in southern Ukraine, sending up clouds of dark smoke that veiled parts of the city. The Russian military said the targets were an oil processing plant and fuel depots around Odesa, which is Ukraine's largest port and home to its navy.
"I live in that eight-floor building. At six in the morning, Russia launched an attack, and this piece of rock reached my house,” said Maiesienko Ilia, who lives near one of the targeted facilities.
The Odesa city council said Ukraine’s air defense shot down some missiles before they hit the city. Ukrainian military spokesman Vladyslav Nazarov said there were no casualties from the attack.
The smaller port of Mariupol, located to the east on the Sea of Azov, remained cut off from the rest of the country as Russian and Ukrainian soldiers fought for control of the besieged city. About 100,000 civilians -less than a quarter of the prewar population of 430,000 - are believed to be trapped there with little or no food, water, fuel and medicine,
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it hoped a team of nine staffers and three vehicles it sent Saturday to help evacuate residents would reach Mariupol on Sunday but cautioned, "The situation on the ground is volatile and subject to rapid changes.”
Ukrainian authorities said Russia agreed days ago to allow safe passage from the city, which has been the site of some of the worst attacks and greatest suffering, but similar agreements have broken down repeatedly under continued shelling.
Mariupol is in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for eight years. Its capture would create an unbroken land corridor from Russia to Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
With Mariupol squarely in Russia’s crosshairs, Ukraine insisted it had gained a leg up elsewhere in the country. As his country's troops retook territory north of the capital of Kyiv from departing Russian troops, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on all Ukrainians to do whatever they could "to foil the enemy’s tactics and weaken its capabilities.”
Also read: Zelenskyy: Troops shell retreating Russians
“Peace will not be the result of any decisions the enemy makes somewhere in Moscow. There is no need to entertain empty hopes that they will simply leave our land. We can only have peace by fighting,” Zelenskyy said late Saturday.
Zelenskyy and Ukraine's Western allies believe Russia has shifted its forces from the capital region and the country's north in order to build strength in the east and south. The Ukrainian leader again urged the West to supply his military with warplanes and more anti-missile systems.
"Every Russian missile that hits our cities and every bomb dropped on our people, on our children, only adds black paint to the history that will describe everyone on whom the decision depended - the decision of whether to help Ukraine with modern weapons,” Zelenskyy said.
While the geography of the battlefield morphed, little changed for many Ukrainians more than five weeks into a war that has sent more than 4 million people fleeing the country as refugees and displaced millions more from their homes.
The regional governor in Kharkiv, said Sunday that Russian artillery and tanks performed over 20 strikes on Ukraine’s second-largest city and its outskirts in the country's northeast over the past day. Gov. Oleh Synyehubov said a missile strike on the city of Lozovo wounded four people and that Russian tanks bombarded a hospital in the town of Balakliia.
Zelenskyy alleged Saturday that Russian troops have left mines around homes, abandoned equipment and even the bodies of the dead as they withdraw from around Kyiv. Those claims could not be independently verified, but Ukrainian troops were seen heeding the warning.
In towns and cities surrounding Kyiv, signs of fierce fighting were everywhere in the wake of the Russian redeployment. Destroyed armored vehicles from both armies lay in streets and fields along with scattered military gear.
Ukrainian troops were stationed at the entrance to Antonov Airport in the suburb of Hostomel, demonstrating control of the runway that Russia tried to storm in the first days of the war.
Inside the compound, the Mriya, one of the biggest planes ever built, lay wrecked underneath a hangar pockmarked with holes from the February attack.
The head of Ukraine’s delegation in talks with Russia said Moscow’s negotiators informally agreed to most of a draft proposal discussed during face-to-face talks in Istanbul this week, but no written confirmation has been provided.
The Ukrainian negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia said on Ukrainian TV that he hoped the was developed enough so that the two countries’ presidents can meet to discuss it. But the top Russian negotiator in talks with Ukraine, Vladimir Medinksy, was quoted by Interfax as saying that it’s too early to talk about a meeting between the two leaders.
Ukrainian authorities warned that Russia's focus on eastern Ukraine did not mean Kyiv and other cities wouldn't become targets again. In his evening address Saturday, Zelenskyy called for his people to do whatever they can to ensure the country’s survival, even by engaging in acts as simple as showing each other kindness.
“When a nation is defending itself in a war of annihilation, when it is a question of life or death of millions, there are no unimportant things. ... And everyone can contribute to a victory for all,” the president said.
Russia praises India’s neutral stand on Ukraine fighting
Russia’s foreign minister lauded India for not judging in a “one-sided way” as he discussed Moscow’s military involvement in Ukraine with his Indian counterpart on Friday, after Washington urged New Delhi to use its leverage with Russia to end the war.
Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said ties between the two countries have sustained them through difficult times in the past.
Jaishankar emphasized the importance of a cessation of violence but avoided condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Read: Ukraine strike on Russian territory reported as talks resume
“Differences and disputes should be resolved through dialogue and diplomacy and by respect for international law, the U.N. Charter, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states,” he said.
Lavrov praised India for judging “the situation in its entirety, not just in a one-sided way.” He expressed hope that mutual respect in search of a balance in ties will prevail in the future.
Asked if Indian Prime Minister Narendra could mediate between Moscow and Kyiv, he replied, “I haven’t heard about such talk, frankly speaking.”
“Given India’s position of a just and rational approach toward international problems, it can support such a process. No one is against it, I think,” he told a group of Indian and Russian journalists.
The two sides were expected to discuss the uninterrupted supply of spare parts for Russian-made military equipment in India’s arsenal, trade, and oil payments in rubles, as demanded by Moscow.
India was Moscow’s ally during the Cold War but has since sought to maintain ties with both Russia and Western nations.
On Thursday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the U.S. expects India to use its relations with Russia to help end the war in Ukraine.
“Different countries are going to have their own relationship with the Russian Federation. It’s a fact of history, it’s a fact of geography. That is not something that we are seeking to change,“ Price told reporters in Washington.
He said the U.S. is looking for its friends and allies to speak in unison and loudly against the “unjustified, unprovoked, premeditated Russian aggression.”
Read: White House: Intel shows Putin misled by advisers on Ukraine
Experts say up to 60% of Indian defense equipment was acquired from Russia. New Delhi finds itself in a bind at a time when it is facing a 2-year-old standoff with China along their disputed border, with tens of thousands of soldiers within shooting distance. Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers died in a clash in 2020.
In the early 1990s, about 70% of Indian army weapons, 80% of its air force systems and 85% of its navy platforms were of Soviet origin. India is now reducing its dependency on Russian arms and diversifying its defense procurement, buying more from the United States, Israel, France and Italy.
But Indian energy dependency on Russia remains a factor in relations.
Last month, state-run Indian Oil Corp. bought 3 million barrels of crude from Russia to secure its needs, resisting Western pressure to avoid such purchases.
Jaishankar, who met British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Thursday, defended India’s decision and decried “what looks almost like a campaign on this issue.”
He said March figures show that Europe bought 15% more oil and gas from Russia than it did in February.
“We get the bulk of our supply from the Middle East. In the past, India bought less than 1% from Russia. When the oil prices go up it is natural for countries to go out to the market and look up for good deals that are good for people,” he said at a meeting of the India-U.K. Strategic Futures Forum.
“I am quite sure that if we wait for two-three months and look at who are the big buyers, I suspect the list will not be vastly different. I suspect we will not be in top 10 on that list.“
Read: Pentagon may need more budget funding to help Ukraine
The United States, Britain and other Western countries are urging India to avoid buying Russian oil and gas. Indian media reports said Russia was offering a discount on oil purchases of 20% below global benchmark prices.
Ukraine strike on Russian territory reported as talks resume
Talks to stop the fighting in Ukraine resumed Friday, as another attempt to rescue civilians from the besieged port city of Mariupol broke down and Russia accused the Ukrainians of launching a cross-border helicopter attack on an oil depot.
The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said the alleged airstrike by a pair of helicopter gunships caused multiple fires and injured two people. A Kremlin spokesman said the incident on Russia’s territory could undermine the negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian representatives.
“Certainly, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of the talks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied when asked if the strike could be viewed as an escalation of the war in Ukraine.
It was not immediately possible to verify the claim that Ukrainian helicopters targeted the oil depot or several nearby businesses in Belgorod also reported hit. Russia has reported shelling from Ukraine before, including an incident last week that killed a military chaplain, but not an incursion of its airspace.
Asked if Ukraine had fired on the depot, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in Warsaw that he could “neither confirm nor nor reject the claim that Ukraine was involved in this simply because I do not possess all the military information.”
Read: Russians leave Chernobyl; Ukraine braces for renewed attacks
The latest negotiations, taking place by video link, follow a meeting in Turkey on Tuesday where Ukraine reiterated its willingness to abandon a bid to join NATO and offered proposals to have its neutral military status guaranteed by a range of foreign countries.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, wrote on social media that Moscow’s positions on retaining control of the Crimean Peninsula and expanding the territory in eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists “are unchanged.”
The International Committee for the Red Cross said complex logistics were still being worked out for the operation to get emergency aid into Mariupol and civilians out of the city, which has suffered weeks of heavy fighting with dwindling water, food and medical supplies.
“We are running out of adjectives to describe the horrors that residents in Mariupol have suffered,” ICRC spokesperson Ewan Watson said Friday during a U.N. briefing in Geneva. “The situation is horrendous and deteriorating, and it’s now a humanitarian imperative that people be allowed to leave and aid supplies be allowed in.”
He said the group had sent three vehicles toward Mariupol and a frontline between Ukrainian and Russian forces but two trucks carrying supplies for the city were not accompanying them. Dozens of buses organized by Ukrainian authorities to take people out also had not started approaching the dividing line, Watson said.
City authorities said a little while later that the Russians were blocking access to Mariupol and it was too dangerous for people to leave it on their own.
“We do not see a real desire on the part of the Russians and their satellites to provide an opportunity for Mariupol residents to evacuate to territory controlled by Ukraine,” Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He said Russian forces “are categorically not allowing any humanitarian cargo, even in small amounts, into the city”
On Thursday, Russian forces blocked a 45-bus convoy attempting to evacuate people from Mariupol after the Russian military agreed to a limited cease-fire in the area, and only 631 people were able to leave in private cars, the Ukrainian government said.
Russian forces also seized 14 tons of food and medical supplies trying to make it to Mariupol, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.
The city has been the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war. Tens of thousands of residents managed to leave in the past few weeks through humanitarian corridors, reducing the population from a prewar 430,000 to an estimated 100,000 by last week. But continued Russian attacks have repeatedly thwarted aid and evacuation missions.
Read: War in Ukraine fuels fears among draft-age Russian youths
In the past few days, the Kremlin, in a seeming shift in its war aims, said that its “main goal” now is gaining complete control of the Donbas, where Mariupol is located. The Donbas is the predominantly Russian-speaking industrial region of eastern Ukraine where Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014 and have declared two areas as independent republics.
Western officials said there were growing indications Russia was using its talk of de-escalation in Ukraine as cover to regroup, resupply and redeploy its forces for a stepped-up offensive in the east.
Russian forces have subjected both Chernihiv, a besieged city in northern Ukraine, and the capital of Kyiv to continued air and ground-launched missile strikes despite Moscow saying Tuesday it planned to reduce military activity in those areas.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces have retaken the villages of Sloboda and Lukashivka, south of Chernihiv and along one of the main supply routes between the city and Kyiv, according to Britain’s Defense Ministry.
Ukraine has also continued to make successful but limited counterattacks to the east and northeast of Kyiv, the ministry said.
Hours later, Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram early Friday that the fire at the oil depot “occurred as a result of an airstrike from two helicopters of the armed forces of Ukraine, which entered the territory of Russia at a low altitude.”
The depot run by Russian energy giant Rosneft is located about 35 kilometers (21 miles) north of the Ukraine-Russia border.
Read: Heavy fighting rages near Kyiv as Russia appears to regroup
Separately, Ukraine’s state power company, Energoatom, said Russian troops pulled out of the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site in northern Ukraine early Friday after receiving “significant doses” of radiation from digging trenches in the exclusion zone around the closed plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it could not independently confirm the exposure claim. Energoatom gave no details on the condition of the soldiers and did not say how many were affected. There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin.
The agency, which is the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said it had been informed by Ukraine that Russian forces at Chernobyl had transferred control of the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster to the Ukrainians in writing.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi wrote on Twitter that he would visit the decommissioned plant as soon as possible and his agency’s “assistance and support” mission to Chernobyl “will be the first in a series of such nuclear safety and security missions to Ukraine.”
Grossi was in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad Friday for talks with senior officials about nuclear issues in Ukraine. Nine of Ukraine’s 15 operational reactors are currently in use, including two at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhya facility, the agency said.
Russian forces seized the Chernobyl site soon after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24, raising fears they would cause damage or disruption that could spread radiation. The workforce there oversees the safe storage of spent fuel rods and the concrete-entombed ruins of the reactor that exploded in 1986.
Five weeks and one day into a conflict that has left thousands dead and driven more than 4 million refugees from Ukraine, there seemed little faith that the two sides would find agreement on their respective demands any time soon.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said conditions weren’t yet “ripe” for a cease-fire and he wasn’t ready for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy until the negotiators do more work, Italian Premier Mario Draghi said after a Thursday telephone conversation with the Russian leader.
In his nightly video address late Thursday, Zelenskyy doubted Moscow’s willingness to end the conflict. He warned that Russian withdrawals in the country’s north and center were just a military tactic to build up strength for new attacks in the southeast.
“We know their intentions,” Zelenskyy said. “We know that they are moving away from those areas where we hit them in order to focus on other, very important ones where it may be difficult for us.”