Russia-Ukraine live updates: Zelensky calls Russian forces ‘butchers’ as pullback reveals horrors

Kremlin troops appear to be withdrawing from Ukraine’s north and northwest, including parts of the Chernihiv and Sumy regions that were occupied in the early days of the war, as they retreat from the outskirts of the capital, Kyiv, local officials and U.S.-based military analysts say.

The Russian pullback appears to be “disorderly” in nature, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, with reports of individual soldiers and possibly whole pockets of troops being left behind. That is making it difficult to precisely assess the situation, and how soon Russia will be able to reconsolidate and refit its units for any renewed assault in the east.

“The disorder of the Russian withdrawal suggests that at least some of the units now re-concentrating in Belarus and western Russia will remain combat ineffective for a protracted period,” ISW wrote in its latest assessment.

In a video message Sunday, the governor of the Sumy region, Dmitry Zhivitsky, said that it was still too early to talk about fully clearing the region, but that Russian armored vehicles, tanks and artillery are all gone. Disparate groups are being actively cleared out of every community, he said. Residents reported that some of those left behind had gotten drunk and woken up only to discover that they had been abandoned and their units had left, the governor added.

The Ukrainian military reported that several villages in the Chernihiv region had been cleared. Chernihiv’s mayor, Vladyslav Atroshenko, told a local broadcaster that 70 percent of the city had been destroyed.

The Kremlin has said it is repositioning troops into the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, where Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian government since 2014. The Pentagon has said that it does not consider this movement proof that the Russian government is serious about its vow to let up attacks on major cities — but rather, that Moscow intends to refit these troops, resupply them and possibly employ them elsewhere in Ukraine.

As global leaders condemned signs of a massacre in Russian troops’ wake in the suburb of Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, the governor of Sumy said that more than 200 possible war crimes cases had been opened in his region based on international warfare treaties.

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.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was reelected on Sunday, and named Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as among his opponents in a victory speech.

Orban, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has touted himself as a sharp defender of Hungary and its people, casting his lack of intervention on Ukraine’s behalf as a strength.

Speaking to supporters on Sunday, Orban listed the forces his party had struggled against in the election, according to the Associated Press: “The left at home, the international left all around, the Brussels bureaucrats, the Soros empire with all its money, the international mainstream media, and in the end, even the Ukrainian president.”

While much of the world has jumped to Ukraine’s defense since the Russian invasion, Orban has not, though the country — which borders Ukraine — has taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees.

In video remarks released late Saturday, just before Hungary’s election, Zelensky sharply criticized Orban, saying that he was “one person who it seems isn’t fully understanding what’s happening” and “perhaps the only one in Europe who openly supports Mr. Putin.”

“We never asked for anything special from Budapest,” Zelensky said. “We didn’t even get from them what everyone else is doing for peace. … We haven’t seen moral leadership.”

Human Rights Watch said it has documented “several cases” of war crimes it says were perpetrated by Russian soldiers, including allegations of repeated rape, executions without proper trials and “other cases of unlawful violence.”

The organization said it interviewed 10 people, including witnesses, victims and residents, to document the events. The Washington Post has not independently verified the accounts.

Among the interviewees was a woman who told the rights organization that she was raped repeatedly by a Russian soldier inside a school where she had been sheltering near Kharkiv, in Ukraine’s east. She told the organization that her face and neck were cut with a knife.

The rights group said it was aware of two cases of summary execution, in which a person is accused of a crime and then killed without a trial. One case involved the execution of six men, and another involved the killing of one man of five who had been rounded up, according to Human Rights Watch, which interviewed witnesses, including a woman who said she was the mother of one of the executed men.

“The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians,” the rights organization’s Hugh Williamson said in the report. “Rape, murder and other violent acts against people in the Russian forces’ custody should be investigated as war crimes.”

The interviews took place between Feb. 27 and March 14.

In light of the mass graves recently seen in Bucha, a suburb near the capital Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said they have asked the International Criminal Court to visit the graves to gather evidence of potential war crimes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has described Russia’s attack on his country as “genocide.” Russia has denied the allegations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise appearance at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night via a remote video message, urging the millions of viewers watching to “support us in any way you can” during the Russian invasion.

Host Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show” introduced Zelensky. “One thing that has always made music so powerful is the way it responds to the times. Even in the darkest times, music has the power to lift spirits and give you hope for a brighter tomorrow. And there is nobody who could use a little hope right now more than the people of Ukraine,” Noah said.

Zelensky appeared from a bunker in Kyiv, according to Variety, which reported that the video was shot within the past 48 hours. ″The war. What is more opposite to music? The silence of ruined cities and killed people. Our children draw swooping rockets, not shooting stars. Over 400 children have been injured and 153 children died. And we’ll never see them drawing,” he said. “Our parents are happy to wake up in the morning in bomb shelters, but alive. Our loved ones don’t know if we will be together again. The war doesn’t let us choose who survives and who stays in eternal silence.”

A satellite company says its images document a mass grave 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.

CNN said Sunday that its reporters visited those church grounds and found the mass grave. They reported seeing “at least a dozen bodies in body bags” and spoke to Bucha residents, who said many more dead were already buried there. The journalists also witnessed people crying and searching for their loved ones.

Seven people were killed and 34 were injured after the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv was shelled on Sunday, the prosecutor’s office there said.

About 6 p.m. local time Sunday, “Russian occupiers fired on residential buildings” in Kharkiv’s Slobidsky district, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement posted on Telegram.

Among the 34 injured were three children, the statement said. Ten houses and a tram depot were damaged, it said.

Attached to the statement was a photo appearing to show two bodies in the street with heads and torsos wrapped in white fabric. Russia has been accused of killing civilians after tying their hands or covering their heads.

Though Russian forces have been retreating from the region around the capital Kyiv, the move is largely seen as a reallocation of resources to focus on capturing Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions, where Kharkiv is located. In its overnight operations report, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Russia “continues to blockade the city of Kharkiv, inflict artillery strikes on residential areas of the city and try to regroup troops.”

The prosecutor’s office said an investigation has begun into whether the shelling violated the “laws and customs of war.”

ODESSA, Ukraine — Haunting images of bodies littering the streets of a Kyiv suburb and reports of civilian executions are triggering new international condemnation against Russia as Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky demanded accountability for what he said amounts to “genocide.”

Ukrainian officials said they have asked the International Criminal Court to visit the mass graves seen in Bucha, a suburb northwest of the capital, so experts can gather evidence of possible Russian war crimes. European leaders supported the call for an independent investigation and pledged to hold Russia accountable for what NATO’s secretary general described as “brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades.”

The calls for retribution came as Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to be regrouping and shifting his focus away from Kyiv, near where Ukrainian forces are recapturing territory, and toward the country’s south and east.

Zelensky said Ukrainians are being “destroyed and exterminated” because they refuse to be subdued by Russian forces.

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