People around the world have been outraged by grim images of a mass grave, bound bodies of victims and hundreds of dead Ukrainian civilians.
Many have referred to these terrible events as the "Bucha massacre."
Bodies of civilians wrapped in plastic bags lie in a mass grave in the town of Bucha near Kyiv, Ukraine, April 4, 2022. Photo: EPA/OLEG PETRASYUK
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the United Nations Security Council with a special message calling on the international community to review and reboot approaches to securing peace in the world.
Zelensky admonished the UN Security Council for its inaction in stopping Russia’s war against his country and called for Moscow to face accountability for crimes.
“We are dealing with a state that is turning the UN Security Council veto into the right to die,” Zelensky said of Russia, which has used its veto to block any action in the council.
“This undermines the whole architecture of global security; it allows them go unpunished, so they are destroying everything they can,” he added.
Zelensky spoke just days after Russian troops withdrew from Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, where residents and local officials said more than 300 civilians had been killed by Russian troops during the town’s occupation.
"Now the world has seen what the Russian military did in Bucha while keeping our city under occupation," Zelensky said. "But the world has yet to see what they have done in other occupied cities, in other occupied areas of our country. Geography may be different, but cruelty is the same. Crimes are the same."
Halyna Pastushuk, our Lviv correspondent, now temporarily resident in Poland, has this report.
Click on the audio player above to listen.