Donning a flak jacket and flanked by military personnel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky toured Bucha, a newly liberated suburb of Kyiv, on Monday, seeing firsthand the devastation there that’s shocked the world.
Zelensky grew visibly emotional as he surveyed the carnage inflicted on civilians, and accused Russia of genocide.
“Every day we find people in barrels, cellars,” he told reporters on the street. “Some strangled, some clearly tortured… We know of thousands of people killed and tortured with severed limbs, raped women, murdered children.”
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As Russian forces retreated last week, Ukrainians and the rest of the world began to see the magnitude of the cruelty inflicted on the occupied town, where Russians have been accused of indiscriminately slaughtering civilians. Photos showed the bodies of civilians littering the streets, with some Ukrainians found bound with fatal gunshot wounds to the backs of their heads. Bodies of women were found stripped and burned.
“These are war crimes and they will be recognized by the world as genocide,” Zelensky told reporters, adding that the Russians “treat people worse than animals,” CNN reported.
He said that “key leaders of leading countries” deciding on whether “Ukraine should be a NATO member” should come to Bucha and see “how this flirting with the Russian federation ends.”
Seeing the barbarism of the Russian troops would also affect negotiation proceedings, he said.
“It is very difficult to talk,” Zelensky said, “It is very difficult to negotiate when you see what they did here.”
During an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday evening, Zelensky repeatedly accused Putin of targeting Ukraine with genocide.
“We have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities… This is the reason we are being destroyed and exterminated,” he said. “This is the torture of the whole nation.”
