President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Russian soldiers and officers responsible for civilian murders and other war crimes will be held responsible, and called on western nations to impose maximum sanctions on the Russian Federation (RF), and to provide Ukraine the heavy weapons it needs now, to prevent more mass killings.
Referring to more than 300 civilians found dead, some apparently by execution, in the recently-liberated Kyiv bedroom community Bucha, Zelensky said in a late Thursday evening, April 4, national address said: “There will absolutely be more (civilians killed by RF troops). This (Bucha) is only one village. As we liberate more of our country, we are going to find (evidence of) more war crimes.”
On Friday RF forces began a withdrawal from positions, at times held for more than a month, in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Kharkiv sectors. Ukraine Armed Forces (UAF) units, and independent media accompanying them, followed in the wake of the retreating Russians. Over the weekend Ukrainian conventional and social media reported signs and in some places shockingly hard evidence of widespread violence against Ukrainian civilians by RF army units.
The Kremlin’s state-controlled news networks have claimed Moscow’s forces always operate according to international rules of war – an assertion widely contradicted by eyewitnesses, social media, conventional media, official statements, and international on-the-ground journalist reports.
Zelensky said: “Every normal person in the world understands, who brought war and the massed deaths to Ukrainian soil. There is a mass of evidence that it was precisely Russian troops that are destroying peaceful cities. They kidnap, torture, and murder peaceful people.”
The Ukrainian leader said that RF soldiers and leaders responsible for war crimes will be prosecuted and brought to justice, and that Ukraine will “never stop”. He said Kyiv is working with the EU, the International Criminal Court, and international law enforcement agencies like Interpol to register each crime, collect proper evidence for prosecution.
Domestic and international journalists, Zelensky said, have a critical role to play in the process not just by making public the fact of RF atrocities, but by recording Ukraine’s diligent and rules-based prosecution of suspected RF war criminals, in the months and years to come.
Zelensky predicted the Kremlin and its subordinates will try to avoid prosecution by putting forward conspiracy theories and attempting to push responsibilities for war crimes on the victims as, he said, was the case in the 2014 shoot-down of the MH17 civilian airliner. At the time RF state propaganda claimed a UAF fighter jet destroyed the plane. A Dutch-led international investigative commission concluded a RF military-operated anti-aircraft missile actually knocked down the Boeing 777, killing 298.
“But it (shifting blame and faking facts) won’t work. They can’t fool the entire world. We will establish who did the killing and who gave the orders. This is the 21st century and there are far more tools available to us, than to those who prosecuted Nazis for war crimes during World World War Two,“ Zelensky said.
Switching to the Russian language to speak directly to the Kremlin’s propaganda masters, he said: “The end of your life will be at the end of a rope. In the best of situations.”
Turning to NATO states cautious on confronting Russia, but now considering more severe sanctions in the wake of the Bucha killings, Zelensky said “We (Ukraine) shouldn’t have have had to wait for hundred of dead Ukrainian civilians, before certain European leaders finally realized that the Russian state must be hit with absolutely the most severe and damaging sanctions and pressure possible, immediately. Declarations of concern are not enough.”
Zelensky repeated a long-running appeal for heavy weapons Ukraine badly needs to conduct offensives of its own, to force RF troops away from Ukrainian cities and civilians.
“Ukraine can field all military equipment that we have asked (NATO states) for,” Zelensky said. If we had received it, we would have, already, have forced the Russian occupier from our lands. If we had had all the tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft systems and other heavy equipment we had asked for, we could have saved thousands of our people. We are not asking you to fight the Russian invaders. But we are asking you to help,” he said.
“I am going to keep saying that to all of you, who are decision-makers for delivering weapons to Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
