Joe Biden has called for a war crimes tribunal against Vladimir Putin amid horrifying evidence of Russian-committed atrocities against civilians in towns near Kyiv.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, the US president said: “You saw what happened in Bucha.”
The US president took aim at Putin and called him a "war criminal".
His comments came after Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky visited Bucha, 35 miles north-west of the capital, where Ukrainian officials said the bodies of civilians have been found.
The Russian pullout from areas surrounding the capital has revealed streets strewn with corpses of civilians, some seemingly killed deliberately at close range.
Mass graves have also reportedly been found.
The bodies of 410 civilians have been removed from Kyiv-area towns which were recently retaken from Russian forces, according to Ukraine's prosecutor-general Lryna Venediktova.
Zelensky called the Russian actions "genocide" and he called for the West to apply tougher sanctions against Putin’s regime.
“Dead people have been found in barrels, basements, strangled, tortured," he said.
Biden, who promised further sanctions against Russia, stopped short of calling its actions genocide.
“We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight. And we have to gather all the detail so this can be an actual - have a war crimes trial,” he said.
He called Putin “brutal”. He added: “What's happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone sees it.”
The horrific scenes have been met with outrage among world leaders.
Among them, France’s Emmanuel Macron said Monday: “We are all extremely shocked and we have condemned it with the utmost strength.
“Secondly, it is clear that there is clear evidence of war crimes.”
The Kremlin has denied responsibility for war crimes claiming that evidence emerging from Bucha has been faked.
“From what we have seen, the video material can't be trusted, as our specialists from the Defence Ministry detected signs of video forgery and various fakes,” claimed Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The US and more than 40 other countries are working together to investigate Russia’s conduct during the war after the United Nations Human Rights Council agreed to establish a commission of inquiry.
There is another probe by the International Criminal Court, an independent body based in the Netherlands.
