Kremlin says diplomats’expulsions will prompt response
LVIV/MOSCOW: The United States and Europe were planning new sanctions on Tuesday to punish Moscow over civilian killings in Ukraine, and President VolodymyrZelenskyy warned more deaths were likely to be uncovered in areas seized from Russian invaders.
Russian forces withdrew from towns north of the capital Kyiv last week as it turns its assault to Ukraine’s south and east. Ukrainian troops recaptured towns devastated by nearly six weeks of the war, including Bucha, where dead civilians lined the streets.
Searing images of a mass grave in Bucha and the bound bodies of people shot at close range drew an international outcry on Monday. US President Joe Biden called for a war crimes trial against Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the United States will ask the UN General Assembly to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. Russia denied any accusations related to the murder of civilians and said it would present “empirical evidence” to a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday proving its forces were not involved.
In an early morning video address, Zelenskyy said he would also address the Security Council on Tuesday as he builds support for an investigation into the killings in Bucha. “And this is only one town. One of many Ukrainian communities which the Russian forces managed to capture,” Zelenskyy said. “Now, there is information that in Borodyanka and some other liberated Ukrainian towns, the number of casualties of the occupiers maybe even much higher,” he added, referring to a town 25km west of Bucha.
Reuters saw several bodies apparently shot at close range, along with makeshift burials and a mass grave in Bucha, but could not independently verify the number of dead or who was responsible. Ukraine’s foreign minister, DmytroKuleba, said he spoke with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about Bucha and stressed “that Ukraine will use all available UN mechanisms to collect evidence and hold Russian war criminals to account.”
Ukraine said it was preparing for about 60,000 Russian reservists to be called in to reinforce Moscow’s offensive in the east, where Russia’s main targets have included the port of Mariupol and Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city.
In Mariupol, a southeastern town on the Azov Sea that has been under siege for weeks, Reuters images showed three bodies in civilian clothes lying in the street, one against a wall sprayed with blood. Ukraine says it has evacuated thousands of civilians in the past few days from Mariupol, which is surrounded by areas held by Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region.
A team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was stopped during an attempt to reach Mariupol to evacuate civilians and is now being held in a nearby town, a spokesperson said on Monday. West of Mariupol, in the town of Mykolaiv, shelling on Monday killed 10 people, including a child, and injured 46 others, regional administration head OleksandrSenkevich said. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the report.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the expulsions of Russian diplomats by European countries will prompt a response from Moscow and will complicate international relations.
Germany, France, Italy and Spain are among the countries which have expelled diplomats since Monday. Peskov said that “we view negatively, we view with regret this narrowing of possibilities for diplomatic communication, diplomatic work in such difficult conditions, in unprecedent crisis conditions.”
He added that “it is short-sighted and a step which firstly will complicate our communication, which is required in order to seek reconciliation. And secondly it will inevitably lead to reciprocal steps.”
Spain is joining other European Union countries in expelling Russian diplomats. Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares announced Tuesday that at least 25 diplomats and staff at the Russian Embassy in Madrid are being expelled.
He said the group represents a threat to Spain’s security and the timing of the expulsion “is a response to crimes that cannot go unpunished,” in a reference to what he said were “barbaric” Russian war crimes in Ukraine in recent days.