Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has relayed horrifying testimony of Russian war crimes to the UN Security Council as he urged the organisation to take action to end the conflict.
A meeting on Tuesday, convened by Britain, considered reports Vladimir Putin’s troops killed hundreds of civilians as they retreated from Bucha, a suburb near Kyiv.
Speaking to the council, Mr Zelensky said: “There is not a single crime they [Russia] would not commit there, the Russian military surged and purposefully shot and killed anyone who served our country.
“They shot and killed women outside their houses when they just tried to call someone who is alive. They killed entire families, adults and children and they tried to burn the bodies.
“I am addressing you on behalf of the memory of the deceased every single day and the memory of the civilians who were shot and killed in the back of their head after being tortured.”
Harrowing images published over the weekend showed tied bodies shot at close range while a mass grave filled with corpses was also uncovered by Ukrainian forces who reclaimed the town on Saturday.
Mr Zelensky compared the Russian army’s actions to “other terrorists”.
He accused the Russian Army of horrific war crimes, such as crushing civilians in their cars to death with tanks “for their pleasure” and raping and killing women in front of their children.
Some had their tongues pulled out because “the aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them”, Zelensky said.
He said: “This is no different from other terrorists such as Daesh... And here it’s done by a member of the United Nations Security Council”.
Ukraine’s leader told world represenatives the horrors of Bucha is being repeated elsewhere in Ukraine.
He warned, “The most terrible war crimes of all times, that we’ve seen since the end of World War Two, have been committed.”
“The massacre in our city of Bucha is unfortunately only one of many examples of what the occupiers have been doing on our land for the past 41 days, and there are many similar cities, similar places, where the world has yet to learnt the full truth,” he said.
He called upon the UN Security Council, on which Russia has a veto as a permanent member, to reform itself to stop Russian aggression.
Russia’s veto, he said, “undermines the whole architecture of global security, it allows them to go unpunished so they are destroying everything that they can”.
After his moving speech, Ukraine’s delegation showed assembled diplomats horrifying and graphic footage which appeared to show the aftermath of Russian war crimes in Irpin, Mariupol and Bucha and other cities.
Among the victims were children.
Responding to the haunting scenes, Britain’s UN ambassador Dame Barbara Woodward said: “I would like to thank the delegation of Ukraine for sharing that video with us.
“The images are harrowing, speaking in my national capacity, we are appalled by what we have seen, and we reiterate our solidarity with Ukraine”.
