Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, April 5: In an emotion charged voice, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday demanded “accountability” at the UN Security Council on Tuesday for Russian “crimes” carried out during Moscow’s invasion of his country. People “were killed in their apartments, houses… civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road, just for their pleasure,” Zelensky told the full sitting of the UNSC, including Moscow’s envoy, in describing alleged atrocities in Ukraine’s Bucha town on the outskirts of the capital city of Kyiv.
“The most terrible war crimes since World War II are being committed in Ukraine,” he said. “This (Russian forces in Bucha) is no different from other terrorists such as Daesh, who occupied some territory, and here it is done by a member of the United Nations Security Council,” Zelensky told the UN. “The world is yet to learn the full truth of Ukraine,” he said.
“Yesterday I returned from our city of Bucha, recently liberated from Russian troops not far from Kyiv. There is not a single crime that they would not commit. The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our country,” he said. “They shot and killed women outside their houses when they just tried to call someone who is alive, they killed entire families, adults and children and they tried to burn the bodies,” he added.
Zelensky demanded reforms of the UN Security Council, and appealed to either “throw out Russia” or “dissolve yourself if you can’t do anything.” “Accountability must be inevitable.” Zelensky added that “hundreds of thousands” of Ukrainians had also been deported to Russia.
He urged the UN to “act immediately” on President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his country, calling for Russia to be expelled from the UN Security Council. Zelensky called on the 15-member council, which aims to ensure international peace and security, to “remove Russia as an aggressor and a source of war, so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war.”
He described the “Russian atrocities” in Bucha as no better than Daesh. “If nothing is done, countries will not rely on international bodies and laws. I propose a global conference for reforms. All should be equal,” Zelensky said. “The United Nations can be simply closed. Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to close the UN? And the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately,” he added in his video address.
US President Joe Biden has called for a war crimes trial and more sanctions on Russia over the deaths in Bucha. The European Union offered to send a team of investigators to Ukraine gather evidence. The EU said it is discussing new punitive measures against Moscow. A top official said the EU is considering sanctions on Russian oil and coal.
Moscow denied responsibility for civilian deaths, claiming images of dead bodies in Bucha and other Kyiv suburbs are “fakes.” The Russian Defence Ministry accused the Ukrainian military of staging civilian deaths in a video it claimed was made on Monday in the village of Motyzhyn, but provided no proof of its claims.
The UN Security Council meeting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on Tuesday, with Zelensky addressing the members including Moscow’s envoy pressing for tougher sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s regime. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the meeting by warning of the global fallout from the conflict, with soaring food, energy and fertilizer prices affecting up to 1.2 billion people in 74 countries.
“The war in Ukraine must stop — now,” Guterres told the Council, after calling it “one of the greatest challenges ever to the international order.” “We need serious negotiations for peace, based on the principles of the United Nations Charter,” he said. UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths is also due to update the body after his recent visit to Moscow.
A top UN official told the 15-member Security Council of “credible” claims Russia has used indiscriminate cluster munitions two dozen times in populated parts of Ukraine. United Nations human rights body “OHCHR has received credible allegations that Russian forces have used cluster munitions in populated areas at least 24 times,” UN undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, told the meeting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She said the global body was “gravely concerned by the persistent use of explosive weapons with a wide impact area,” saying such weapons are causing the most civilian casualties in the war.
Moscow faced global revulsion and accusations of war crimes after the Russian pull-out from the outskirts of Kyiv revealed streets strewn with corpses of what appeared to be civilians, some of whom had seemingly been killed at close range. The grisly images of battered bodies left out in the open or hastily buried led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin. Germany and France reacted by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they were spies, and US President Joe Biden said Russian leader Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes.