Investigators Gather Evidence of Atrocities as Russia Rejects
After President Biden for the first time said Moscow was committing genocide against the Ukrainian people, the Kremlin said it “categorically” disagreed. Authorities exhumed bodies outside Kyiv, even as Russian troops appeared to be massing for a new offensive.
Investigators on Wednesday accelerated efforts to collect evidence of alleged Russian atrocities outside Kyiv, with French forensics teams and the Ukrainian authorities exhuming bodies from communal graves and European experts describing “clear patterns” of human rights violations by Moscow’s forces.
The push to document what the United States has described as possible war crimes came as President Biden for the first time accused Russia of carrying out a “genocide” in Ukraine and President Vladimir V. Putin vowed to see the invasion to “full completion,” with Russian forces apparently preparing for a new onslaught in eastern Ukraine.
Satellite images released on Wednesday offered new evidence that Russia is building up troops and military equipment for what analysts say could be a decisive battle in the region. Russian tanks and artillery units have been seen moving on a highway near Kharkiv and positioned in fields and farms on the Russian side of the border.
Mr. Biden, who previously called Mr. Putin a war criminal, made it clear that his genocide accusation did not constitute a legal designation but was based on his belief “that Putin is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian” in a war that has reduced cities to rubble, forced millions from their homes and killed untold numbers of civilians.
It was not clear whether Mr. Biden’s comment would lead to changes in U.S. policy, which has sought to isolate Russia and bolster Ukraine’s defenses while avoiding direct military conflict with Moscow. The White House is expected this week to announce $750 million in new military aid for Ukraine, according to a U.S. official.
Here are other major developments:
An initial report by a mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe documented a “catalog of inhumanity perpetrated by Russia’s forces in Ukraine” and found “instances in which war crimes and crimes against humanity may have been committed,” the U.S. ambassador to the organization said on Wednesday. The report also found violations committed by Ukrainian forces.
Mr. Putin on Tuesday dismissed the mounting evidence of atrocities committed by Russian forces as “fake” and vowed to carry out the invasion.
In his latest address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine offered to exchange a detained pro-Russian politician for Ukrainians being held captive by Moscow’s forces. Ukraine’s security service said on Tuesday that officers had detained Viktor Medvedchuk, who has long been considered one of Mr. Putin’s closest allies in Ukraine.
The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia visited Ukraine on Wednesday, in the latest solidarity visit by European leaders.
The Kremlin said it “categorically” disagreed with President Biden’s description of Russian actions as a “genocide.” “We consider such attempts to distort the situation to be unacceptable,” the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters.
Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters More than 1.4 million people in eastern Ukraine now have no access to piped water, and 4.6 million people across the country are at risk of losing their water supply, according to the United Nations.
The intensification of fighting in the east and the widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas threaten to further damage the water system, which is at risk of complete collapse, according to the agency.
“Water is essential for life and a right for everyone,” said Osnat Lubrani, the agency’s resident coordinator in Ukraine. “The health risks, particularly for children and the elderly, caused by water stoppages are severe, as people are forced to use dirty water sources, resulting in diarrhea and other deadly infectious diseases.”
Ukrainian prosecutors race to document evidence of possible Russian war crimes.
As Ukraine’s military prepares for a battle for the east of the country, hundreds of forensic investigators, prosecutors, and researchers are racing to secure evidence of any war crimes committed by Russian soldiers retreating from towns and villages in northern Ukraine in recent weeks.
Ukrainian prosecutors were joined this week by a team of French experts as they exhumed bodies from mass graves in Bucha, a Kyiv suburb, where hundreds of civilians were killed during the brief Russian occupation of the area. On Tuesday, they said they had exhumed 49 bodies from one communal grave, many of which cemetery workers had collected from homes and streets during the occupation, often at great risk.
In another corner of the field, the burned remains of three more bodies — a mother and two children who had been shot and then burned in their car — were exhumed in front of Iryna Venediktova, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, and a team of French investigators. Wrapped in an orange blanket, the charred remains were in pieces.
On Wednesday, they began work exhuming a second communal grave that the regional prosecutor, Ruslan Kravchenko, said probably contained 40 to 60 bodies.
The French government said that its team in Bucha included ballistics and explosives experts and that it could do rapid DNA tests. Potential evidence from that and investigations involving several other countries will be channeled to the International Criminal Court, which is looking into possible war crimes in the conflict.
At the same time, the Ukrainian interior ministry said the police and other investigators were combing through images to identify Russian soldiers believed to have committed war crimes.
“Thanks to the facial recognition technologies, we were able to identify over 500 individuals who committed crimes against civilians in the Kyiv region, especially in Irpin, Bucha, and other suburbs of Kyiv,” Ukraine’s deputy interior minister, Kateryna Pavlichenko, said in an interview.
The war in Ukraine differs from many other conflicts in the speed with which investigators have arrived to gather evidence of possible war crimes. In some other cases — such as mass graves of Islamic State victims whose bodies were exhumed years later in Iraq — much of the potential forensic evidence has been lost or degraded.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, standing near the site of two communal graves on Tuesday, said that they had an obligation to both uncover the facts and to do so in a transparent way to combat Russian disinformation.
Even as the Ukrainian authorities were unearthing bodies in the full view of international journalists and observers, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday called the atrocities in Bucha “fake” and said that they had been elaborately staged by the West.
“When you see dead bodies here, from the other side, from the Russian Federation, they say it is all fake, all this is our theater,” Ms. Venediktova said.
But the investigators say they are intent on showing the world the reality.
“They can see everything. They can see the situation here: real graves, real dead bodies, real bomb attacks,” she said. “That’s why for us this moment is very important.”
