Russia-Ukraine live updates: World leaders condemn atrocities alleged in Bucha

Recent satellite images and analysis from Maxar Technologies document what may be a mass grave dug in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where signs of execution-style killings drew international outcry this weekend.

Bucha’s mayor told The Washington Post that 270 residents are buried in mass graves, and he estimated that dozens more were left lying on the street. Ukrainian leaders accused invading forces of terrorizing civilians before withdrawing from towns around the capital, leaving behind bodies that authorities and journalists are still trying to document.

The Russian Defense Ministry said reports of possible war crimes in Bucha were a “hoax.”

The scene in Bucha, as seen by a Post photographer

A satellite photo from Thursday appears to show a large grave, according to Maxar Technologies — a 45-foot-long trench near the Church of St. Andrew and Pyervozvannoho All Saints. Maxar said its images also show “the first signs of excavation” on March 10.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to the international community to help Ukraine investigate and punish the Russian forces he accused of committing atrocities against unarmed civilians in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities, images of which have prompted a global outcry.

Zelensky called Russian forces “butchers and looters,” and he vowed to find every soldier involved in such crimes and hold them — as well as their leaders — accountable.

“The responsibility is shared,” he said in Russian. “The responsibility for the murders, the torture, the torn-off hands and feet strewn about the street. For the people shot in the back of their head with their hands bound,” he said.

A photographer on assignment for The Washington Post has documented people in Bucha who had been killed, their hands bound behind their backs.

Zelensky also directed remarks toward mothers of Russian soldiers he accused of executing civilians.

“What did the Ukrainian city of Bucha ever do to Russia?” he said in Russian. “How did this all become possible? … You couldn’t have not known that was inside your children.”

The Ukrainian leader also announced the creation of a special agency to investigate and litigate crimes committed by Russian forces, and whose purpose will be to collaborate with local and international “specialists, investigators and prosecutors,” to punish people who may have been involved in crimes against Ukrainians.

Western leaders denounced the alleged atrocities Sunday and said they would intensify sanctions, but Zelensky said such punishment “is not enough.”

“More consequences are needed, not just for Russia but for the political behavior that allowed this evil to come to our land,” he said, calling on “friends of Ukraine around the world” to help punish wrongdoers.

“But the time has come to do everything possible so that the war crimes of Russian soldiers do not become the latest manifestation of this evil on Earth,” he said.

Ukrainian forces found mass graves in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, on Saturday while recapturing territory. The discovery has prompted calls to investigate possible war crimes.

LONDON — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a self-exiled Russian oligarch and vocal Kremlin opponent, has called on Russian billionaires and officials who have fled Russia to publicly denounce President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine as criminal.

“Public figures cannot leave quietly and then sit quietly. If you have left, then you should publicly dissociate yourself or we should be forced to suspect that you are acting on [the Kremlin’s] behalf,” Khodorkovsky said in an interview last week in his London office. “You should step up to the microphone and say that Putin is a war criminal and that what he is doing is a crime, that the war against Ukraine is a crime. Say this, and then we’ll understand that Putin doesn’t have a hold over you.”

Khodorkovsky — who was Russia’s richest man before he was arrested in 2003 and imprisoned for 10 years while his Yukos oil company was taken over by the Russian state — was referring in particular to the high-profile Russian oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven of Alfa Group. They were once his comrades among Russia’s seven original oligarchs of the 1990s, who then controlled much of the country’s economy. Fridman and Aven left Russia in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and were put under sanctions by Britain and the European Union over alleged ties to the Putin regime.

Biden administration officials have discussed intensifying their sanctions campaign against Russia as evidence emerges of the apparent execution of civilians in a suburb near Kyiv, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Reports of civilian massacres in Bucha led to swift international condemnation and claims of war crimes from world leaders, as well as pledges to escalate the West’s economic measures against Russia. Ukrainian officials have asked for an investigation of the International Criminal Court of mass graves in Bucha that NATO’s Secretary General called “brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades.”

The scope of the potential U.S. retaliatory measures was not clear Sunday afternoon, but senior Biden officials have previously discussed potentially devastating “secondary sanctions” that would target countries that continue to trade with Russia.

The Biden administration could also impose sanctions on sectors of the Russian economy that they have not hit so far, including mining, transportation, and additional parts of the Russian financial sector. The world continues to buy billions of dollars worth in Russian oil and gas, giving the Kremlin a direct financial lifeline. Officials stressed planning was preliminary and no decisions had been made about potential responses.

Russia’s Defense Ministry dismissed as “provocation” images appearing to show civilians’ bodies lining the streets of Bucha, a town in the Kyiv region, after Russian forces pulled out of the area.

Western officials expressed horror at the images and reports out of Bucha, where the mayor said 270 residents had been buried in mass graves, and promised to punish Moscow with new sanctions. Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of war crimes and called for an investigation.

In a statement Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry acknowledged that its troops “completely withdrew” from Bucha. The statement said the retreat occurred Wednesday.

Responding to allegations that its forces committed atrocities against civilians, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed no civilians were harmed while it had control of Bucha. It said, without offering evidence, that Ukrainian troops had fired in the area.

The images from Bucha “are another production of the Kyiv regime for the Western media,” the statement said. It claimed the same of an attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol last month, which also drew widespread condemnation.

Amid the condemnation, Russia requested a Monday meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss what Moscow’s U.N. representative, Dmitry Polyansky, called a “blatant provocation by Ukrainian radicals,” according to RIA, a Russian state-owned news agency.

World leaders vowed to punish Moscow with new sanctions as harrowing accounts emerged from the town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, where the bodies of civilians were found on the streets as Russian troops retreated.

The grim images emerged Saturday as journalists reported of corpses lying on Bucha’s streets. The town’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told The Washington Post that about 270 residents had been buried in two graves.

European Council President Charles Michel said on Twitter that he was “shocked by the haunting images of atrocities committed by the Russian army in Kyiv liberated region.”

He added that “further EU sanctions and support are on their way.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for an international investigation of the events in Bucha and vowed more sanctions. Killing civilians, he said, represents a “war crime.”

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht went further, saying the European Union should discuss banning Russian gas imports, according to her ministry.

“Such crimes must not go unanswered,” the ministry quoted her as saying, using its official Twitter account to promote an interview she gave to a German television station.

Germany has thus far opposed calls to ban Russian energy supplies, with Scholz saying it would devastate the German and European economies.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to do “everything in my power to starve Putin’s war machine.” He added that the United Kingdom would ramp up sanctions against Russia and bolster military support for Ukraine.

The European Union’s economic commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, said Saturday that the E.U. was working to impose further sanctions on Russia.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, called on the Group of Seven to impose “devastating” new sanctions on Russia and accused the country of carrying out a “massacre” in Bucha, Reuters reported.

Moscow has previously denied targeting unarmed civilians in Ukraine.