Update at 5 p.m.
Zelensky accuses Russia of committing ‘genocide’. In an interview with the American channel CBS, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday accused Russia of committing a “genocide” in Ukraine to eliminate “the whole nation”the day after the discovery of numerous bodies in the streets of Boutcha, a town on the outskirts of kyiv.
Nearly 300 people buried in Boutcha. “We have already buried 280 people”, said the mayor of the city, Anatolii Fedoruk, on Saturday. Boutcha had been retaken in recent hours by Ukrainian forces after nearly a month of Russian occupation. The assessment is in progress.
Ukraine demands more sanctions against Russia. “The Russians want to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can. We have to stop them and put them out. I demand devastating new G7 sanctions NOW Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba wrote on Twitter, quoting a “oil, gas and coal embargo”, the closure of all “ports to Russian ships and goods” and the “disconnection of all Russian banks from Swift ».
Russia denies any abuse. “Where have these images gone for four days? The fact that they were absent only confirms that it is a fake,” says the Russian Ministry of Defense on its Telegram channel, adding that the Russian military left Boucha on March 30.
“The Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes,” Macron said. “The images reaching us from Boutcha, a liberated town near kyiv, are unbearable. In the streets, hundreds of cowardly murdered civilians,” lamented the French president on Twitter.
The voices of the international community rise. Besides the French President, Emmanuel Macron, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, demanded that light be shed on the “crimes committed by the Russian army”. “It has to stop”, said the head of the American diplomacy, Antony Blinken. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, for his part, denounced acts « horrible » and “absolutely unacceptable” against civilians.
Mayor of Motyjyn was ‘killed in captivity’ by Russian troops. This was announced on Sunday by Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk. The kidnapping in this village west of kyiv of Olha Sukhenko and her husband, also found dead on Saturday, was declared on March 26 by the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office. Kidnapped on March 19 and 25, the mayors of Berislav and Snivske – respectively in the region of Kherson (South) and Chernihiv (North) – have themselves been released, said the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, on his Telegram feed.
A series of explosions in Odessa. Several huge columns of black smoke and flames rose this morning above an industrial area of Ukraine’s main port on the Black Sea in the south-west of the country. The explosions caused no casualties, according to the Ukrainian army. After airstrikes by Russian forces on the port city of Odessa, local authorities announced that several rocket attacks had hit Mykolaiv.