Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would address the UN Security Council on Tuesday and predicted worse examples of mass killings of civilians by Russian troops would be discovered.
Tuesday’s Security Council session is to consider Ukrainian charges of killing civilians by Russian troops in Buka, northwest of Kyiv, after hundreds of bodies were discovered, some bound and shot at close range.
Russia has vehemently denied the allegations, calling them “criminal provocation” and saying it would present “empirical evidence” to the Security Council that its forces did not engage in atrocities.
The Ukrainian leader has already spoken by video link to more than a dozen legislatures, including the US Congress, the British Parliament and the European Parliament.
“I would like to emphasize that we are interested in the most complete, transparent investigation, the results of which will be known and explained to the entire international community,” a stern-looking Zelensky said in his nightly video address early Tuesday.
Zelensky said that in Bucha, where mass graves and bodies were found after Ukraine recaptured the city from Russian forces, at least 300 civilians were killed.
“And this is only one city: one of several Ukrainian communities that the Russian army managed to capture,” he said.
“Now, there is information that in Borodyanka and some other liberated Ukrainian cities, the casualties of the occupiers may be even higher.”
Ukrainian officials say they have restored control of all of the Kyiv region and other districts following Russia’s announcement, as it moved its target from Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north to secure control over all of the eastern Donbass region. Was.
In the north and east around Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions, “the occupiers did something that the locals had not even seen 80 years ago during the Nazi occupation,” Zelensky said.
“It was in Ukraine’s interest to have thousands of journalists there. As much as possible! Let the world see what Russia has done.”
He added that the Russian army did not hide what had happened in Bucha, but they could have done the same in other places they occupied.