Russia-Ukraine war latest: Zelenskiy calls Russian forces ‘butchers’ after civilian mass graves found around Kyiv – live
Ukraine president decries abuses of invading forces; lawyers investigating possible war crimes have found 410 bodies and have examined 140 so far
- Day 40 of the invasion: what we know so far, including Bucha killings
- Full report: Russia now synonymous with Bucha killings, Zelenskiy says
- Killing of civilians in Bucha and Kyiv condemned as ‘terrible war crime’
- Russian missiles strike fuel depot in key Ukraine port of Odesa
- Huge scale of sexual violence endured in Ukraine emerges
- Why second-hand British cars end up on Ukraine’s frontline
A Ukrainian soldier inspects the wreckage of a destroyed Russian armoured column on a road in Bucha, north of Kyiv. Follow the latest news and live updates from the Russia-Ukraine war. Photograph: Matthew Hatcher/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
Martin Belam (now) and Samantha Lock (earlier)
Ukraine MP Yelyzaveta Yasko has been on Sky News in the UK, saying that the scenes from Bucha are unbelievable for the 21st century. She told viewers:
It’s devastating and something that you cannot adjust to, you cannot accept, but at the same time, every day it’s happening. There are more and more victims coming, and if we don’t act very decisively in the world to end this war I will continue seeing this.
She warned that Mariupol and other places could have seen worse events. She said that she has lost her own apartment, and does not know what has happened to her neighbours.
It was put to her that the Russians have claimed that the scenes have been staged to discredit Russia. She said “It’s such a terrible cynicism. The question is how did these societies end up, and that political leadership of Russia end up that they can so easily justify the crimes and the murders and saying that it was just staged?”
She called on the west to act to end the war and provide security guarantees that are “real, not only just on paper.”
“The only way to win in this war is to show strength,” she said. “There cannot be any compromises with Putin at this stage. We’re not going to make any compromises with our territory and the people who already died for defence of Ukraine.”
She called for Vladimir Putin to be held responsible for the actions of Russians in Ukraine, saying “One day there will be justice, and they will pay that price, but when it happens? It happens only if we fight for it.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron has just called on France Inter radio for new sanctions in response to what has happened in Ukraine’s Bucha. Reuters reports he said there are very clear clues today pointing to war crimes in Ukraine, and that new sanctions are needed to act as a power of dissuasion.
“What happened in Bucha demands a new round of sanctions and very clear measures,” Macron added. Those new sanctions should target coal and oil, said Macron, who faces a re-election battle this month.
Updated at 8.17am BST
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Professor Michael Clarke, a defence and security expert and a specialist adviser to the House of Commons Defence Committee, has said that the images coming out of Ukraine are clear evidence of war crimes. He told Sky News:
The deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime in and of itself, every day of the week. So unless somebody can provide a military logic why civilians are targeted, that is a straight war crime. Civilians who appear to have had their hands tied behind their back and were shot. There’s no strategic rationale for that whatsoever.
As to the response from Russia to the accusations, Clarke said:
They always deny it. The Russia deny everything like this. They go through three phases. First of all, they deny everything. And then they try to obfuscate, they create stuff on social media, which indicates ‘Oh it’s all very complicated and this was going on at the time, and that was going on, and no simple answers are possible’.
And then a couple of years later, they often admit it and they say yes, yes, we did do this or we did do that, but you do the same. And they point to some sort of moral equivalence in the West.
They did it over the poisoning of Litvinenko in 2006 and Skripal in 2018. They did it over the bringing down of the civilian airliner over Ukraine. They always deny it. They always do. And nobody believes them. That’s the point.
In the UK, it has been secretary of state for Wales, Simon Hart, on media duties for the British government. Of the images emerging from Bucha which appear to show mass graves and evidence of the torture and murder of civilians, he said on Sky News:
It just seems to be completely unbelievable. And you have to look twice, blink twice, to be able to actually fully take in what’s happening. I think what we’ve got to do is, as some of the reports have indicated, keep the pressure on in every way we can, whether that’s in the provision of weapons, whether it’s in the provision of financial help, all of the different ways in which we can and have so far intervened we must continue to do, and if anything, we need to step that up.
He repeated several times that “we’re [the UK] leading the world” in response to requests from Ukraine, and have been praised by President Zelenskiy for “leading the world”.
On refugees fleeing to the UK, “We don’t want to be standing there with a clipboard saying no,” the minister said. He was unable to give a number of people from Ukraine who had arrived from Wales, saying that was a matter for the Welsh government. He said it was “a bit harsh” to say that only a handful of Ukrainians had been allowed into the country.
The UNHCR says over 4 million people have fled Ukraine abroad, with over 2 million of those moving to Poland. The UK government has issued about 25,000 visas for people to enter the country.
Ukraine’s agriculture minister said on Monday he expects “quite a large harvest” this year and hopes Ukraine will be able to export grain, but warned that continuation of the war would mean higher prices for all countries, Reuters reports.
The recently-appointed minister, Mykola Solskyi, said the situation was “difficult” with fuel, which is needed for spring fields.
Russia’s foreign ministry said that footage of dead civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha had been “ordered” by the United States as part of a plot to blame Russia.
“Who are the masters of provocation? Of course the United States and Nato,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview on state television late on Sunday, Reuters reports.
Zakharova said the immediate Western outcry over the images of dead civilians indicated the story had been part of a plan to sully Russia’s reputation.
“In this case, it seems to me that the fact that these statements (about Russia) were made in the first minutes after these materials appeared leaves no doubt as to who ‘ordered’ this story.”
Zakharova offered no evidence to back these claims.
- This is Martin Belam here in London. You can contact me at martin.belam@theguardian.com
Today so far
Before I hand this liveblog over to my colleague, Martin Belam, here is a quick refresher of where the situation currently stands.
- Ukraine has accused Russian forces of committing war crimes and a “massacre” in Bucha, a town just 30km northwest of the capital Kyiv, after the bodies of unarmed Ukrainian civilians and mass graves were found on Sunday. Bodies of civilians - many with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture - were found on the streets after Ukrainian troops reclaimed the town.
- Ukrainian prosecutors said they found 410 bodies in towns near Kyiv, and 140 bodies had been examined on Sunday. Russia denied allegations that its forces had killed civilians as it retreated from war-torn areas of the country.
- Satellite images from Bucha appear to show an approximately 45ft-long trench dug into the grounds of a church where a mass grave has been identified.
- World leaders condemned the killings and called for independent investigations. French president Emmanuel Macron, UN secretary general António Guterres, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, British prime minister Boris Johnson and US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield all publicly condemned Russia’s actions.
- The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, described the killings as “a punch to the gut” and joined western allies in vowing to document the atrocities to hold the perpetrators to account.
- Russia described the situation in Bucha as a “provocation” by Ukraine intended to disrupt peace talks. The Kremlin’s foreign ministry said Russia was seeking a UN security council meeting on the matter. Its defence ministry described the photos and videos as “another staged performance by the Kyiv regime”. Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s UN security council deputy representative, tweeted on Sunday: “In the light of heinous provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha Russia requested a meeting of UN Security Council on Monday April 4.”
- Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned Russian forces as “murderers”, “torturers” and “rapists” after the killings came to light, describing the Kremlin-ordered attack on his country as amounting to genocide . “How did they also become butchers? ... They killed deliberately and with pleasure,” he said in a national address late on Sunday. He vowed to investigate and prosecute all Russian “crimes” in Ukraine.
- Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dymtro Kuleba, said Bucha was a “deliberate massacre” while speaking on Times Radio on Sunday. Describing Russia as “worse than Isis”, he said Russian forces were guilty of murder, torture, rape and looting. He also urged G7 countries to impose “devastating” sanctions immediately.
- Zelenskiy criticised the west’s “policy of concessions to Russia” in the lead up to the war. Describing Ukraine’s past pursuit of Nato membership: “They thought that by refusing Ukraine, they would be able to appease Russia, to convince it to respect Ukraine and live normally next to us ... I invite Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy to visit Bucha and see what the policy of concessions to Russia has led to in 14 years. To see with their own eyes the tortured Ukrainian men and women.”
- Russian forces continued their attacks on other Ukraine cities. Seven people died and 34 were wounded after a residential area in Kharkiv was struck on Sunday, local prosecutors said.
- At least 70% of Chernihiv has been destroyed by Russian forces, the city’s mayor said on Sunday. Vladyslav Atroshenko said the “consequences” of the attacks were severe and mirrored those of other badly damaged cities in Ukraine such as Bucha and Mariupol.
- Russian forces are continuing to “consolidate and reorganise” their offensive in the Donbas, while the capture of Mariupol is a “key objective” of the Russian invasion, UK’s ministry of defence said.
- The Ukrainian military claims Russia has launched a “hidden mobilisation” of around 60,000 soldiers to replenish units lost in Ukraine, according to its latest operational report.
- Russian missiles struck “critical infrastructure”, most likely a fuel depot, near Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa in the early hours of Sunday but there were no casualties, officials in the city said.
- The European Union should consider a ban on gas imports from Russia, German defence minister Christine Lambrecht has said.
- The huge scale of sexual violence endured by women and girls in Ukraine has begun to emerge as victims recount the abuse they have suffered at the hands of Russian soldiers.
- The United Nations’ human rights office says there have been 3,455 civilian casualties since the war in Ukraine began. The figure includes more than 1,400 deaths and over 2,000 injuries but the actual number is believed to be considerably higher, the agency said in recently published report.
- Zelenskiy appeared in a video message at the Grammy awards, calling for viewers to “fill the silence with your music” and “tell the truth about the war” across social networks and on TV.
Russia requests UN meeting over 'provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha'
Russia hopes to hold an an emergency UN security council meeting today after claiming the “provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha” is behind the request for talks.
Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s UNSC deputy representative, tweeted on Sunday:
In the light of heinous provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha Russia requested a meeting of UN Security Council on Monday April 4.”
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova added that the meeting is to discuss Kyiv’s attempts to disrupt peace talks and escalate violence with a “provocation” in Bucha.
Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Sunday:
Russian Federation requested a meeting of the UN Security Council in connection with the provocation of the Ukrainian military and radicals in the city of Bucha.
The idea behind the next crime of the ‘Kyiv’s regime’ is the disruption of peace negotiations and the escalation of violence.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy appeared earlier in a video message at the Grammy Awards to ask for support in telling the story of Ukraine’s invasion by Russia.
During the message that aired on the show Sunday, he likened the invasion to a deadly silence threatening to extinguish the dreams and lives of the Ukrainian people.
Our musicians wear body armour instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals, even to those who can’t hear them ... But the music will break through anyway.”
Fill the silence with your music. Fill it today to tell our story. Tell the truth about the war on your social networks, on TV, support us in any way you can any, but not silence. And then peace will come to all our cities,” Zelenskiy said.
Following his message, John Legend performed his song Free with Ukrainian musicians Siuzanna Iglidan and Mika Newton, and poet Lyuba Yakimchuk, as images from the war were shown on screens behind them.
Russian forces refocusing on Donbas, UK defence ministry says
The UK’s ministry of defence has released its latest intelligence report, claiming Russian forces are continuing to “consolidate and reorganise” their offensive in the Donbas.
Russian forces are continuing to consolidate and reorganise as they refocus their offensive into the Donbas region in the east of Ukraine.
Russian troops, including mercenaries from the Russian state-linked Wagner private military company, are being moved into the area.”
410 bodies found as part of war crimes investigation
A total of 410 bodies have been found in towns near Kyiv as part of an investigation into possible war crimes by Russia, the country’s top prosecutor has said.
Ukrainian authorities have begun to reclaim areas surrounding the capital after Russian forces withdrew over recent days.
The mayor in Bucha, a liberated town 37km (23 miles) northwest of the capital, said that 300 residents had been killed by Russian forces while Chechen fighters controlled the area.
Ukrainian prosecutors have only been able to enter the towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel for the first time on Sunday as they begin to process the number of casualties and work out the extent of possible war crimes.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venedyktova, said in a statement on Sunday: “410 bodies of killed civilians have been taken from the territory of Kiev region ... 140 of them have already been examined by prosecutors and other specialists.
“We need to work with witnesses,” Venedyktova said, adding that authorities would be looking at photos and video evidence.
“People today are so stressed that they are physically unable to speak.”
In a national address on Sunday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy saidf he believed hundreds of people were killed. “Tortured, executed civilians. Corpses on the streets. Mined areas. Even the bodies of the dead were mined.”
Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy said it was clear hundreds of civilians had been killed, but that he did not want to say exactly how many there were, as efforts were still under way to clear mines in the area.
“Many local residents are considered missing. We cannot give an exact figure, but there are a lot of people,” he said.
What we know about what happened in Bucha, Ukraine
Ukraine has accused Russian forces of committing a “massacre” in Bucha, a town just 30km northwest of the capital Kyiv.
Bodies of civilians - many with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture - were found littering some streets after Ukrainian troops reclaimed the town.
This is what we know at this stage about what happened in Bucha, as reported by Agence France-Presse.
Bucha, a commuter town of around 37,000 outside Kyiv, as well as the nearby town of Irpin, saw fierce fighting since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February.
Bucha was occupied by the Russian army on the third day of the war, on 26 February, and remained inaccessible for more than a month. Many residents were trapped by the incessant fighting and deprived of water and electricity while surviving in freezing temperatures.
When shelling stopped on Thursday, Ukrainian forces were only able to fully enter the town.
AFP journalists on Saturday described seeing massive holes left by shells in apartment blocks, numerous wrecked cars and streets littered with debris or downed power lines.
The journalists also reported seeing the bodies of at least 22 people in civilian clothes on a single street in the town. One was on the pavement near a bicycle, others had bags of provisions near them. Another man was found with his hands tied behind his back.
These reports were corroborated by Associated Press journalists who said they saw the bodies of at least 21 people in various places around Bucha. One group of nine, all in civilian clothes, were reportedly scattered around a site that residents said Russian troops used as a base. They appeared to have been killed at close range. At least two had their hands tied behind their backs, one was shot in the head, and another’s legs were bound, AP reported.
The cause of death of the victims found has not been able to be immediately determined.
Witnesses of alleged atrocities in Bucha told the Guardian that Russian soldiers had fired on men fleeing the town, and had killed civilians at will. Taras Schevchenko, 43, said Russian soldiers had refused to allow men to leave through a humanitarian corridor, instead shooting at them as they fled across an open field. Bodies, he said, were scattered on the pavements, with some of those killed having been “squashed by tanks … like animal skin rugs”.
Shevchenko’s mother, Yevdokia, 77, said she had witnessed an elderly man who had challenged a Russian soldier being shot dead as his wife stood next to him. “They shot him dead, and ordered the woman to leave,” she said. The accounts could not be independently verified.
According to the mayor of Bucha, Anatoliy Fedoruk, the victims were killed by Russian forces with a “bullet in the back of the neck”.
The corpses of 57 people were found in a mass grave, the chief of local rescue efforts Serhiy Kaplychniy, said as he showed AFP the trench where the bodies lay.
The mass grave is behind a church in the town’s centre. Some of the bodies were either unburied or partially buried. They were all dressed in civilian clothes.
On Sunday Mayor Fedoruk said 280 people were buried in mass graves because they could not have be buried in cemeteries that were within firing range.
“We found mass graves. We found people with their hands and legs tied up... with bullet holes in the back of their heads,” presidential spokesman Sergiy Nikiforov told the BBC Sunday.
The mayor of Kyiv who went to Bucha on Sunday, Vitaly Klitschko, told AFP that the exact number of victims was not yet known.
“We believe that more than 300 civilians died,” he said. “This is not a war, it is a genocide, a genocide of the Ukrainian population.”
Updated at 6.04am BST
'Butchers, murderers, torturers, rapists' Zelenskiy calls Russian forces
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed Russian forces as “murderers”, “torturers” and “rapists” after hundreds of bodies of Ukrainian civilians were found on the streets of towns surrounding Kyiv over the weekend.
He also vowed to investigate and prosecute all Russian “crimes” in Ukraine, saying he had created a “special mechanism” to do so.
In a late-night address, the Ukrainian leader said:
Hundreds of people were killed. Tortured, executed civilians. Corpses on the streets ...
Concentrated evil has come to our land. Murderers. Torturers. Rapists. Looters. Who call themselves the army. And who deserve only death after what they did.”
Addressing the mothers of Russian soldiers, he added:
I want every mother of every Russian soldier to see the bodies of the killed people in Bucha, in Irpin, in Hostomel. What did they do? Why were they killed? What did the man who was riding his bicycle down the street do?
Why were ordinary civilians in an ordinary peaceful city tortured to death? Why were women strangled after their earrings were ripped out of their ears? How could women be raped and killed in front of children?
How could their corpses be desecrated even after death? Why did they crush the bodies of people with tanks? What did the Ukrainian city of Bucha do to your Russia? How did all this become possible?
Russian mothers! Even if you raised looters, how did they also become butchers? ... They killed deliberately and with pleasure.”
Satellite images purport to show 45ft-long mass grave in Bucha
Satellite images of the Ukrainian town of Bucha purport to show an approximately 45ft-long trench dug into the grounds of a church believed to be a mass grave for murdered civilians.
The images, captured by private US space technology company Maxar Technologies on 31 March, show signs of excavation on the grounds of the Church of St Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints, the company said.
Reuters journalists who visited Bucha on Saturday said they observed a mass grave at a church, describing seeing hands and feet poking through red clay.
Maxar Technologies, which collects and publishes satellite imagery of Ukraine, said the first signs of excavation for a mass grave at the Church of St Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints were seen on 10 March.
“More recent coverage on 31 March shows the grave site with an approximately 45-foot-long trench in the southwestern section of the area near the church,” Maxar said.
The Guardian could not immediately verify the images.
Russia mobilising another 60,000 soldiers, Ukraine military says
The Ukrainian military has just released its operational report as of 6am this morning, claiming Russia has launched a “hidden mobilisation” of around 60,000 soldiers to replenish units lost in Ukraine.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation plans to engage around 60,000 people during the mobilisation,” the general staff of the Ukrainian armed forces said.
Officials added the Ukrainian forces thwarted seven attack in the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk over the past 24 hours.
Summary
Hello it’s Samantha Lock with you as we continue to deliver the latest developments from Ukraine.
Distressing reports are emerging from the towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel near the capital of Kyiv where the discovery of the bodies of unarmed civilians in mass graves and on roadsides have prompted world leaders to call for independent investigations into war crimes.
Here is a rundown of what we know so far:
- Ukraine has accused Russian forces of committing war crimes and a “massacre” in Bucha, a town just 30km northwest of the capital Kyiv, after the bodies of unarmed Ukrainian civilians and mass graves were found on Sunday. Bodies of civilians - many with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture - were found on the streets after Ukrainian troops reclaimed the town.
- Ukrainian prosecutors said they found 410 bodies in towns near Kyiv, and 140 bodies had been examined on Sunday. Russia denied allegations that its forces had killed civilians as it retreated from war-torn areas of the country.
- Satellite images from Bucha appear to show an approximately 45ft-long trench dug into the grounds of a church where a mass grave has been identified.
- World leaders condemned the killings and called for independent investigations. French president Emmanuel Macron, UN secretary general António Guterres, German chancellor Olaf Scholz, British prime minister Boris Johnson and US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield all publicly condemned Russia’s actions.
- The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, described the killings as “a punch to the gut” and joined western allies in vowing to document the atrocities to hold the perpetrators to account.
- Russia described the situation in Bucha as a “provocation” by Ukraine intended to disrupt peace talks. The Kremlin’s foreign ministry said Russia was seeking a UN security council meeting on the matter. Its defence ministry described the photos and videos as “another staged performance by the Kyiv regime”. Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s UN security council deputy representative, tweeted on Sunday: “In the light of heinous provocation of Ukrainian radicals in Bucha Russia requested a meeting of UN Security Council on Monday April 4.”
- Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy condemned Russian forces as “murderers”, “torturers” and “rapists” after the killings came to light, describing the Kremlin-ordered attack on his country as amounting to genocide . “How did they also become butchers? ... They killed deliberately and with pleasure,” he said in a national address late on Sunday. He vowed to investigate and prosecute all Russian “crimes” in Ukraine.
- Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dymtro Kuleba, said Bucha was a “deliberate massacre” while speaking on Times Radio on Sunday. Describing Russia as “worse than Isis”, he said Russian forces were guilty of murder, torture, rape and looting. He also urged G7 countries to impose “devastating” sanctions immediately.
- Zelenskiy criticised the west’s “policy of concessions to Russia” in the lead up to the war. Describing Ukraine’s past pursuit of Nato membership: “They thought that by refusing Ukraine, they would be able to appease Russia, to convince it to respect Ukraine and live normally next to us ... I invite Mrs Merkel and Mr Sarkozy to visit Bucha and see what the policy of concessions to Russia has led to in 14 years. To see with their own eyes the tortured Ukrainian men and women.”
- Russian forces continued their attacks on other Ukraine cities. Seven people died and 34 were wounded after a residential area in Kharkiv was struck on Sunday, local prosecutors said.
- At least 70% of Chernihiv has been destroyed by Russian forces, the city’s mayor said on Sunday. Vladyslav Atroshenko said the “consequences” of the attacks were severe and mirrored those of other badly damaged cities in Ukraine such as Bucha and Mariupol.
- The capture of Mariupol is a “key objective” of the Russian invasion, UK’s ministry of defence said as heavy fighting continues in the southeastern city.
- Russian missiles struck “critical infrastructure”, most likely a fuel depot, near Ukraine’s southern port of Odesa in the early hours of Sunday but there were no casualties, officials in the city said.
- The European Union should consider a ban on gas imports from Russia, German defence minister Christine Lambrecht has said.
- The huge scale of sexual violence endured by women and girls in Ukraine has begun to emerge as victims recount the abuse they have suffered at the hands of Russian soldiers.
- The United Nations’ human rights office says there have been 3,455 civilian casualties since the war in Ukraine began. The figure includes more than 1,400 deaths and over 2,000 injuries but the actual number is believed to be considerably higher, the agency said in recently published report.
- Zelenskiy appeared in a video message at the Grammy awards, calling for viewers to “fill the silence with your music” and “tell the truth about the war” across social networks and on TV.
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