Europeans, revolted by the images of dozens of corpses found in the vicinity of kyiv, are discussing on Monday an increase in sanctions against Moscow, accused of “genocide” in Ukraine but which denies en bloc and denounces a provocation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky castigated the Russian “murderers, torturers, rapists, looters” after the Russian withdrawal from Boutcha, in the northwestern suburbs of kyiv, and the discovery on the spot of a large number of bodies of civilians in mass graves or in the streets.
The dissemination of these images revolted Westerners and the EU was discussing Monday morning in “emergency” new sanctions against Moscow, demanded in particular by France and Germany, said the high representative of the EU Josep Borrell.
The High Commissioner for Human Rights said she was “horrified” Monday by images of bodies in the Ukrainian town of Boutcha, discovered after the withdrawal of Russian troops, evoking possible war crimes.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on Sunday he was “deeply shocked by the images of civilians killed in Boutcha”, and the United Nations human rights office spoke of “possible war crimes”.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez spoke on Monday of a possible “genocide” and called for the appearance of the culprits “before the International Criminal Court”.
In the aftermath, the Prime Minister of Poland, Ukraine’s western neighbor, took up the term “genocide” and called for the creation of an international commission of inquiry on this subject.
“There are very clear indications of war crimes” in Boutcha and it is “roughly established that it was the Russian army” which was present there, underlined French President Emmanuel Macron.
The total death toll is still uncertain. According to Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, the lifeless bodies of 410 civilians were found in the territories of the Kyiv region recently recaptured from Russian troops, who withdrew there to redeploy to the east and south .
AFP saw the corpses of at least 22 people wearing civilian clothes in the streets of Boutcha on Saturday, killed by “a bullet in the back of the neck”, according to the mayor, Anatoli Fedorouk, to AFP.
Mr. Fedorouk also said on Saturday that “280 people” had been buried “in mass graves” because they could not be buried in communal cemeteries, all within range of Russian fire during the fighting.
“Something terrible”
Moscow denied any wrongdoing and announced on Monday that it would investigate a “provocation” aimed at “discrediting” Russian forces in Ukraine.
Russia has even requested a meeting of the UN Security Council to rule on the “hateful provocations” committed according to it by “Ukrainian radicals” in Boutcha.
The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Britain’s Martin Griffiths, arrived in Moscow on Sunday evening and was due to travel to kyiv, mandated to seek a humanitarian ceasefire in Ukraine. Until now, Russia has refused any visit by a senior UN official whose main subject is Ukraine.
“Absolute evil has come to our land”, denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday evening, who also spoke of “genocide”. He then appeared at the Grammy Awards ceremony via taped video, where he asked for his country’s support.
At Kramatorsk station, in the east of the country still under the control of kyiv, there were hundreds of them this weekend waiting for their train to flee to the West, for fear of being surrounded by the Russians who announced that they wanted concentrate their efforts to “liberate” this region.
“A lot of people have already left, the men are staying, our families are leaving,” grimaced Andreï, whose wife and two children are waiting quietly, luggage at their feet. Like many others, he is distressed because “the bombardments could start at any time”.
A little further on, Svetlana, who had come to accompany a friend, was worried: “Rumors say that something terrible is going to happen here…”
In the south of the country, eight people were killed and 34 injured in Russian bombardments on Sunday on the cities of Otchakiv and Mykolaiv, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office said on Monday.
Westerners now want to adopt new measures against Moscow, after having already acted on several sets of sanctions since February 24 and the start of the Russian invasion, massively targeting companies, banks, senior officials, oligarchs, and prohibiting the export of goods to Russia.
What penalties? Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba framed his expectations in a tweet: “I demand devastating new G7 sanctions NOW: embargo on oil, gas and coal, close all ports to Russian ships and goods , disconnect all Russian banks from SWIFT”.
Gas and talks
The pressure thus bears in particular on hydrocarbons, an important financial resource for Russia. As of Saturday, the Baltic States had announced the cessation of their importation of Russian gas, and the Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, had called on the rest of the EU to follow them.
The Baltic countries are now served by gas reserves stored underground in Latvia.
The United States banned the import of Russian oil and gas soon after the invasion of Ukraine, but not the EU, which was sourcing around 40% from Russia in 2021.
On the side of Moscow, we are already anticipating a possible increase in sanctions. “Sooner or later, we will have to establish a dialogue, whether someone across the Atlantic wants it or not,” stressed Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
How will Boutcha impact the already difficult Russian-Ukrainian talks this week? The Sunday statements on the Russian side gave off a glimmer: the Russian chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, welcomed a “more realistic” position according to him from kyiv, ready under conditions to accept a neutral status for the country, demanded by Moscow, and Dmitri Peskov said about a Putin-Zelensky summit that “hypothetically such a meeting is possible”.
The Kremlin spokesman also stressed that the two delegations must first draw up a “concrete” agreement supposed to normalize relations between the two countries, “not a number of ideas, but a concrete written document”.
Ukraine’s chief negotiator, David Arakhamia, said on Saturday that Moscow had “orally” accepted all Ukrainian positions, “except with regard to the Crimea issue”.
The intense war caused at least thousands of deaths and forced nearly 4.2 million Ukrainians into exile, 90% of them women and children. More than 500,000 people have returned to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry announced on Sunday.