President Joe Biden on Monday called for a war crimes trial against Russian President Vladimir Putin and more sanctions against Russia following new reports of atrocities in Ukraine after Russian troops retreated from areas around Kyiv.
“We saw what happened in Bucha. He is a war criminal,” Biden told reporters when returning to the White House from Delaware. His State Department later said the barbaric acts were not rare individual instances but rather “part of a broader, troubling campaign.”
Biden joined a growing chorus of world leaders on Monday who condemned Russia after Ukrainian officials said the bodies of 410 civilians were found in Kyiv-area towns that were recently retaken from Russian forces.
In Bucha, 280 people were buried in mass graves, according to Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who visited the city Monday. Associated Press reporters saw the bodies of at least 21 people in various spots around Bucha. Russian authorities have dismissed images of the dead civilians as fake.
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Leaders and top government officials in France, Albania, Kosovo, Spain, Poland, Estonia, Japan, New Zealand and the EU’s top diplomat condemned the actions, and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an investigation. France and Germany expelled several Russian diplomats.
A new report from Human Rights Watch says the nonprofit has documented several cases of Russia committing “laws-of-war violations” against civilians in Ukraine. The report, released Sunday, said Russian military forces have committed war crimes in Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv, including repeated rape, two cases of summary execution and other cases of unlawful violence and threats against civilians from Feb. 27 to March 14.
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Latest developments:
►More than 1,500 civilians were evacuated Monday from the devastated port city of Mariupol, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. However, a Red Cross-accompanied convoy of buses was again thwarted in its effort to deliver supplies and evacuate residents, Vereshchuk said.
►The Ukrainian government says 18 journalists have been killed and 13 wounded in the country since the war began. In addition, eight have been abducted or taken prisoner and three are missing.
►The world’s largest aircraft, longer and wider than a football field, was destroyed by a Russian attack in the early days of the war, but its makers vow to restore it.
►In his annual letter to shareholders, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said managing sanctions against Russia has been an “enormous undertaking” and that the bank could lose $1 billion over time. The war and prior trade disputes with China “likely will affect geopolitics for decades,” he said.
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In Bucha, Zelenskyy calls on Russia to end war
Visiting Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, where reports of dead civilians and mass graves have come to light after Russian troops retreated, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for Russia to reach an agreement to end the war.
Zelenskyy, however, also acknowledged the challenges in conducting peace talks after the killings in Bucha. “It’s very difficult to conduct negotiations when you see what they did here,” Zelenskyy said, adding that “dead people have been found in barrels, basements, strangled, tortured” in the suburb and elsewhere.
The BBC reported Zelenskyy met with local residents and reiterated that Russia had committed war crimes. He also called on Western leaders to come to Bucha to see the destruction.
Later, in a video address to the Romanian parliament, Zelenskyy…