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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected Russian “lies” about its manipulation of the horrific events in Bucha. The Ukrainian leader said that “all the crimes of the occupiers are documented.” The details are being discussed with international leaders before the UN Security Council.
“Today has been a really difficult day,” Zelensky said after visiting the towns liberated from the Russian invasion Stoyanka, Irpin, and Bucha.
“This area doesn’t look like yesterday. The bodies of murdered people, murdered Ukrainians, have already been removed from most of the streets. But in the yards, in the houses, there are still the dead,” he said.
Zelensky explained that they have just started an investigation into everything the occupiers have done, and that “there is information about more than three hundred people killed and tortured in Bucha alone. It is likely that the list of victims will be much larger when the entire city is reviewed.”
Ukrainian authorities have information that the number of victims of the occupiers may be even higher in Borodyanka and some other liberated towns. Zelensky further denounced that in many villages in the liberated districts of the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions “the occupiers did things that locals had not seen even during the Nazi occupation 80 years ago.”
The Ukrainian government is doing everything possible to “identify all Russian military involved in these crimes as soon as possible. Everything to punish them. This will be a joint work of our country with the European Union and international institutions, in particular with the International Criminal Court,” the president added.
Zelensky stated that “all crimes of the occupiers are documented. It provides the necessary procedural basis for bringing to justice the guilty Russian military for all the crimes they commit,” and stressed that he is interested in the “most complete, transparent investigation, the results of which are known and explained to the entire international community.”
However, he said that “Russian propagandists” are again trying to dismiss the accusations against his military. “The same lies. They are trying to distort the facts.”
“They are already launching a false campaign to hide their guilt in the mass killings of civilians in Mariupol. They will do dozens of on-stage interviews, re-edit recordings and kill people specifically to make it look like they were killed by someone else,” he insisted.
On the other hand, Zelensky reiterated that “the sanction response to Russia’s massacre of civilians must finally be powerful.”
“I stress once again: Ukraine must obtain all necessary weapons to expel the occupants from our land as soon as possible, to liberate our cities,” he said, stating that he will continue to say the same before all international dignitaries.
In particular, he mentioned that this Tuesday he will address “the Spanish Parliament. And also the UN Security Council.”
Zelensky again warned that the Ukrainian authorities are preparing “for even more brutal activity of the occupants in the eastern and southern directions. We know what they are going to do in Donbas. We know what they are going to do near Kharkiv, in some other parts of the country. Russia concentrates a significant amount of military and equipment there. And this activity shows that the sanctions imposed against Russia are not enough. There will be more.”
If Russian leaders do not start “to really seek peace, to really negotiate peace, they will put their country in the worst conditions in 50 years,” the Ukrainian president predicted.
