US President Joe Biden has called for Vladimir Putin to face a war crimes trial after grim evidence emerged that Russian troops had massacred Ukrainian civilians in Bucha.
Mr Biden said the Russian president was “brutal” after Ukrainian soldiers discovered dead civilian bodies strewn across the streets of the town just outside Kyiv.
Harrowing images published over the weekend showed tied bodies shot at close range while a mass grave stuffed with corpses was also uncovered by Ukrainian forces, who reclaimed the town on Saturday.
“You may remember I got criticised for calling Putin a war criminal,” Mr Biden told reporters on Sunday. “You saw what happened in Bucha - he is a war criminal... but we have to gather all the detail so we can have a war crimes trial.
“We have to gather the information. We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight.”
It marks Mr Biden’s strongest condemnation yet of the Russian leader. The president was criticised by Republicans last month after appearing to call for regime change in Moscow.
National Security advisor Jake Sullivan earlier told reporters that the US would seek information from four sources to build a case for war crimes: the US and its allies, Ukrainian observations on the ground, international organisations including the United Nations and interviews with global independent media.
He said the United States would build a case at the International Criminal Court or another venue.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky branded the killings “genocide” in an interview with CBS News on Sunday, warning that Ukraine faced “extermination”. Mr Sullivan said that US officials had yet to see evidence that killings reached the level of genocide.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that military aid to Ukraine would be ramped up in the face of “despicable attacks against innocent civilians”.
The horrifying discoveries were made after the Kremlin last week claimed it would significantly reduce its operations in the capital and neighbouring Chernihiv and refocus its efforts on the Donbas region.
Without citing any evidence, the Kremlin has claimed the images in Bucha were staged by Ukraine after they recaptured the area.
But satellite images analysed by the New York Times debunked Moscow’s baseless claim, with the newspaper matching a photo showing up to 11 dead bodies from March 11 – when the town was under Russian occupation - with footage shot by a local resident on April 2. It means the corpses may have been there for weeks.
