Russia-Ukraine live updates: World leaders vow to hold Russia accountable for Bucha atrocities

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Sunday that a much-needed humanitarian convoy will spend a second night en route to Mariupol and is “yet to reach the city,” a spokesperson told The Washington Post.

The ICRC team of three cars and nine staffers departed Zaporizhzhia — about 140 miles from Mariupol — on Saturday morning to assist with the humanitarian operation in the battered port city, where as many as 100,000 people are still trapped after weeks of heavy fighting.

The convoy attempted to reach Mariupol on Friday but had to return to Zaporizhzhia, saying the “conditions and arrangements” made it impossible to move forward, despite assurances from Moscow of a cease-fire and safe passage for civilians, the organization said in a statement.

The group tried again Saturday but was spending the night en route and had not yet arrived in the city, the ICRC said.

Ukrainian officials have said that the humanitarian corridor was “essentially not operational” and accused Russia of breaking its promise to allow aid into the sealed-off port city, where civilians have been trapped for weeks without electricity, food or water and under heavy bombardment.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Russia should be isolated from international organizations and urged the Group of 20 to bar Russian officials from its summit later this year, calling it necessary punishment for the invasion of Ukraine.

“I think there is an upcoming G-20 event later in the year — I would not permit Russia to attend,” Clinton said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “And if they insisted on literally showing up, I would hope there would be a significant, if not total, boycott. The only way that we’re going to end the bloodshed and the terror that we’re seeing unleashed in Ukraine and protect Europe and democracy is to do everything we can to impose even greater costs on Putin.”

Clinton said the United States and its allies needed to “double down” on imposing sanctions on Russia and offering lethal aid to Ukraine. More Russian banks could be sanctioned and removed from the SWIFT banking system, she said, and there is greater urgency to reduce dependence on Russian gas and oil.

“Now I think we are really looking at this with our eyes wide open and seeing very clearly the threat that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] poses not just to Ukraine … but really to Europe, to democracy and the global stability that we thought we were building in the last 20 years,” Clinton said. “We’ve got to continue to keep the pressure on Putin and the Russian troops. We cannot, in any way, pause our efforts to support the Ukrainians.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the Russian attack on his nation amounted to a genocide, echoing a word used recently by Kyiv’s mayor to describe the plight of civilians in the nearby town of Bucha.

“This is genocide,” Zelensky said in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “We are the citizens of Ukraine, we have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities.”

He described senseless acts of violence, including the torture of children. “We couldn’t have imagined anything like this because this is a maniac type of decision to destroy the whole nation,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader said he believed Russia was changing its tactics, redeploying troops from cities such as Kyiv and focusing more on the eastern and southern parts of the country. He called on Russia to withdraw all troops to borders “that existed prior to the 24th of February” before additional peace talks could get underway.

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 around 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.”

Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, called the images coming out of Bucha “unbearable” and said those responsible for “war crimes” must be held accountable. She pledged to tighten sanctions against Russia and ramp up 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.

Kuleba called on the International Criminal Court to visit Bucha and other towns around Kyiv as soon as possible to gather evidence of possible war crimes.

Moscow has previously denied targeting unarmed civilians in Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials said they have asked the International Criminal Court to visit the mass graves seen in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, so that experts can gather evidence of possible Russian war crimes.

The request comes as Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said the discovery of the graves — made as Ukrainian troops recaptured territory and Russian forces pulled back from towns they had seized in the war’s earliest days — could “only be described as genocide.”

Condemnation of the alleged assault on civilians resounded around the world, with numerous countries demanding investigations and accountability.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg cautioned Sunday that Russian forces pulling back from the Kyiv region did not amount to “a real withdrawal” from Ukraine and that attacks could even increase in areas outside the capital.

“We see that Russia is [re]positioning its troops and they are taking some of them back to rearm them, to reinforce them, to resupply them,” Stoltenberg said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We should not, in a way, be too optimistic because the attacks will continue and we are also concerned about potential increased attacks, especially in the south and in the east,” he added. “So this is not a real withdrawal but more a shift in the strategy, focusing more on the south and the east.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said Sunday that it was too early to determine the significance of Russian forces pulling back from the Kyiv region but that even if they had decided to refocus on regions in the east and south, they would face a huge challenge.

Russia “could be regrouping and restocking and replenishing and then coming back to Kyiv,” Blinken said on CNN. “I think the Ukrainians have already demonstrated that unless [Russian forces are] able to move every single Ukrainian out of whatever piece of territory they’re trying to hold, it’s not going to last because the will of the Ukrainian people is clear. They will not be subjected to a Russian occupation, whether that’s in and around Kyiv or whether that’s in the east and the south.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday condemned reports of Russian atrocities in Bucha, after images of dead civilians lying in the street emerged following the retreat of Russian forces from the Ukrainian town.

“You can’t help but see these images as a punch to the gut,” Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that the United States had warned that Russian forces would commit war crimes and that accountability was needed. “But I think the most important thing is we can’t become numb to this. We can’t normalize this. This is the reality of what’s going on every single day as long as Russia’s brutality against Ukraine continues. That’s why it needs to come to an end.”

Blinken avoided calling what had taken place in Bucha a genocide, as some Ukrainian officials have, but he said U.S. officials are documenting everything they are seeing in Ukraine.

“We will … make sure that the relevant institutions and organizations that are looking at this, including the State Department, have everything they need to assess exactly what took place in Ukraine, who’s responsible and what it amounts to,” Blinken said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg similarly avoided calling the reports of atrocities in Bucha a genocide but said he “strongly” welcomed the ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court.

“It is a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades,” Stoltenberg said on CNN. “It’s horrific and it’s absolutely unacceptable that civilians are targeted and killed. And it just underlines the importance that this war must end and that [it] is President Putin’s responsibility to stop the war.”

A protest in southern Ukraine was suddenly interrupted by a loud barrage of ammunition in videos verified by The Washington Post.

The footage shows demonstrators carrying Ukrainian flags and chanting “[go] home” as they march in Kakhovka, a Russian-occupied city in the Kherson region.

In one video, Russian soldiers move the protesters south along the street away from the square where Russian tanks sit. People attempt to talk to the soldiers as they walk, and one soldier films the protesters while another points forward.

Nearly two minutes into the video, a soldier holds up a radio to his mouth. About 30 seconds later, soldiers enter the crowd, raise their weapons to the sky and fire. As the protesters flee, some soldiers run after them and smoke rises in the direction of the running demonstrators. Seconds later, an explosion tears through the street, followed by a burst of what sounds like gunfire.

Russian troops opened fire on the demonstrators, Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, Lyudmyla Denisova, said in a statement posted to Telegram. Denisova said that machine-gun fire and grenade explosions could be heard in the city and that people were wounded and detained.