Images of the latest atrocities committed by Russian soldiers on the people of Ukraine were horrific—and undeniable.
In the town of Bucha on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, retreating Russian troops left streets, buildings and yards strewn with corpses of civilians.
Through journalists at the scene, the whole world—except for totalitarian states where Russia’s barbarism is still being defended by state-run media–saw grisly images of battered or burned bodies left out in the open or hastily buried.
Associated Press journalists saw dozens of bodies in Bucha, including at least 13 in and around a building that local people said Russian troops used as a base. Three other bodies were found in a stairwell, and a group of six were burned together.
Many victims seen by AP appeared to have been shot at close range. Some were shot in the head. At least two had their hands tied behind their backs. A bag of spilled groceries lay near one victim.
Journalists also saw bodies wrapped in black plastic, piled on one end of a mass grave in a Bucha churchyard. Many of those victims had been shot in cars or killed in explosions trying to flee the city. A woman said she buried her husband in a garden outside their apartment building after he was detained by Russian troops. His body was one of those left heaped in a stairwell.
Russian officials shamelessly lied, claiming that the bodies were “staged” and that images of them had been spread on social media by Western countries and Ukraine.
But so many independent journalists from various news organizations saw the evidence of Russian brutality and savagery with their own eyes. And satellite images taken weeks ago of Bucha show bodies of civilians on a street, undercutting the Russian government’s outrageous claims that Ukrainian forces caused the deaths or that the scene was staged.
Recounting the latest atrocities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the Russian military must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes, accusing the Kremlin’s troops of the worst atrocities since World War II.
“Civilians were crushed by tanks…they cut off their limbs, slashed their throats, women were raped and killed…their tongues were pulled out,” he said.
Zelensky also called into question the effectiveness of the Security Council itself, where Russia holds a permanent seat and can veto any actions proposed to end the war.
“Where is the security that the Security Council must guarantee? There is no security,” he said. “So where is the peace that the UN was created to guarantee? It is obvious that the key institution of the world, which must ensure the coercion of any aggressors to peace, simply cannot work effectively.”
Calling for reforms in the UN system, he said Russia’s use of its veto power “undermines the whole architecture of global security and allows them to go unpunished.”
The UN Security Council would lose all credibility if it continued to allow Russia to sit on the Council and wield such authority, he said, urging that Russia be removed from the body “as an aggressor and a source of war, so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war.”
The Ukranian leader’s word rang painfully true—this is not the first failure of the UN Security Council to prevent wars that involved one of its permanent members.
In the meantime, the United States said it will ask the UN General Assembly to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council, saying its participation in the UN body is a farce. Outraged by the latest atrocities in Ukraine, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Romania announced the expulsion of a total of 90 Russian diplomats, following similar moves in recent days by Germany, Poland and Slovakia.
Moscow may lie all it wants to its people, but the rest of the world already knows the true nature of its unprovoked war in Ukraine. We have seen the invaders targeting and killing thousands of civilian targets, including the elderly, women and children. We have seen the butchery in Bucha. This war is brutal, savage and inhuman, and the people who launched this aggression, the soldiers who carried out immoral orders, and the Russian people who refused to see the truth all deserve to be pariahs in our community of civilized nations.