LVIV, Ukraine — Russian leader Vladimir Putin faced mounting global condemnation Monday, with President Joe Biden and a growing number of world leaders calling for a war crimes trial, following the discovery in Ukraine of mass graves and streets littered with the bodies of civilians around the suburbs of Kyiv.
“This guy is brutal, and what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous,” Biden told reporters, referring to a town near Kyiv where numerous civilians were found dead, some bearing marks of torture or execution. The Ukrainian government said it has counted more than 400 civilian deaths so far in the suburbs of the capital city.
Biden previously branded Putin a “war criminal” in remarks March 17, but at that time the White House said he was speaking personally and not outlining a formal U.S. position. But six days later, the U.S. formally accused Russia of war crimes and said it was collecting evidence to help prove it.
“He is a war criminal,” Biden said of Putin on Monday. “But we have to gather information, we have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue to fight.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the charred rubble in Bucha as armed guards surrounded him. The president called on the media to come to the city to “show the world what happened here.”
Zelenskyy has described the scenes in Bucha, where photos and videos show mass graves and dead men and women face down on residential roads, as evidence of Russian “genocide” against Ukrainians.
“Ordinary residents of an ordinary city near Kyiv,” Zelenskyy said later in an address to Romanian parliament. “Their hands were tied behind their backs, they were shot in the back of the head or in the eye, killed just in the streets. Civilian vehicles were crushed by military equipment. Vehicles with people! They raped women and girls.”
Zelenskyy also warned that the most brutal images from newly liberated areas, such as Bucha, were still to come.
“Not all evidence has been collected yet,” he said. “Not all burials have been discovered yet. Not all basements where the Russian military tortured people have been inspected yet.”
He pledged to set up a special judicial mechanism, with the participation of international prosecutors and judges, to investigate alleged war atrocities. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday that she had spoken with Zelenskyy and the European Union had set up a joint investigation team to work with the Ukrainian government to “investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
“The perpetrators of these heinous crimes must not go unpunished,” she said in a statement.
Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday dismissed the scenes outside Kyiv as a “stage-managed anti-Russian provocation,” saying that Bucha’s mayor had not spoken of atrocities immediately after Russian troops left the area last week.
The horrific scenes have generated calls for tougher sanctions on Moscow over the war, which is in its 40th day.
“We will do everything to ensure that those who have perpetrated these war crimes do not go unpunished,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday, citing “alleged cases of (crimes against) humanity, war crimes and — why not say it too — genocide.”
Germany and France on Monday expelled dozens of Russian diplomats. French President Emmanuel Macron described the gruesome images as “unbearable.” Macron, who said he supported additional sanctions, such as banning imports of Russian oil and coal into the European Union, said it was “very clear” that Russia committed war crimes.
And a top government official in Germany, a primary importer of Russian gas and one of the strongest holdouts against cutting off such trade, signaled Sunday that it might change course and support a ban. “There has to be a response,” Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said. “Such crimes must not remain unanswered.”
More than half of Germany’s gas comes from Russia. Europe overall receives 40% of its gas and 25% of its oil from Russia.
The Biden administration said Monday that it will try to get Russia kicked off the main human rights body of the United Nations.
“Russia’s participation on the Human Rights Council is a farce,” the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said at a news conference in Bucharest, Romania. “We cannot let a member state that is subverting every principle we hold dear to continue to sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council.”
The 47-nation Human Rights Council, based in Geneva, has been criticized in the past for including countries with questionable human rights records, such as Saudi Arabia and Cuba. The Trump administration pulled the United States from the group, but U.S. membership was restored this year.
Removing a member requires a two-thirds vote in the full 193-nation U.N. General Assembly. It has been done only once: Libya was suspended in 2011 during the chaos surrounding the overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi.
State Department spokesman Ned Price acknowledged that removal is a “rare” and “extraordinary” action but that the administration believes the atrocities reported in Ukraine have outraged a sufficient number of nations to join the vote against Russia.
At a White House briefing, Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security adviser, said Russia appeared to be “revising its war aims” and scaling back its initial goal of toppling Zelenskyy and conquering the entire country.
Russian forces were “retreating” from Kyiv and “repositioning” to concentrate on taking over already contested regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, Sullivan said, where they would probably “seek to surround and overwhelm Ukrainian forces.” Meanwhile, he said, the administration expects Moscow to continue its aerial assault on Kyiv and other major cities to cause “damage” and “terror.”
“Russia’s goal in the end is to weaken Ukraine as much as possible,” he said, warning that the conflict is shifting into what will probably be a “protracted” phase with fighting continuing for months to come.
The U.S. and NATO allies are planning to impose additional economic sanctions on Russia this week, Sullivan said, adding that he expected “additional new (defense) capabilities beyond what’s already been sent to Ukraine” to be delivered in the near future.
Pressed on why the administration rejected Zelenskyy’s characterization of the Bucha atrocities as a genocide, Sullivan said: “We have not yet seen a level of systematic deprivation of life of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide.”
Although they were unable to enter central Kyiv, Russia said its forces had successfully completed the “first phase” of the war against Ukraine and were shifting east to the industrial Donbas region and other areas that are home to pro-Russia separatist movements.
Russian troops appeared to have left several towns around the northeastern city of Chernihiv by Monday, according to regional Gov. Viacheslav Chaus.
Chaus, who said that about 70% of the city is destroyed, warned remaining residents not to get too comfortable. In a message posted to the Telegram app, he counseled patience as Ukrainian troops clear mines.
“We must avoid new victims,” he said.