World

Ukraine’s president showed a harrowing video of dead civilians to the UN Security Council Tuesday and called for immediate action and “accountability” for apparent Russian atrocities, as fears grow that Russia is preparing new offensives in the east and south.

With global revulsion solidifying over Moscow’s prosecution of the war, President Volodymyr Zelensky likened Russia’s assault to Nazi war crimes, while Western nations were ramping up their punishments against the Kremlin.

Washington on Wednesday will ban “all new investment” in Russia, a US source said, while Britain announced it has frozen some $350 billion in assets from President Vladimir Putin’s “war chest” so far.

But Zelensky, in an impassioned speech by video link from Kyiv to the 15-member Security Council, demanded stronger action as he delivered a chilling account of the human toll of Putin’s six-week-old war.

People “were killed in their apartments, houses… civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road,” Zelensky said.

“They cut off limbs, slashed their throats, women were raped and killed in front of their children.”

“Accountability must be inevitable,” he added, calling for Russia’s exclusion from the Security Council — on which it holds veto power.

“Are you ready to close the UN” and abandon international law, the president asked. “If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately.”

Zelensky’s plea follows the harrowing discoveries of civilian victims in Bucha and other towns near Kyiv following Russian troop withdrawals, which he and other officials have denounced as war crimes and attempted “genocide”.

In an subsequent address to Spanish lawmakers, Zelensky compared Russia’s devastating assault to the Nazis’ 1937 bombing of the town of Guernica.

A grim cleanup was underway Tuesday in Bucha, where local workers were seen placing the remains of six partially burned bodies into black bags and placing them into a van.

“What we’ve seen in Bucha is not the random act of a rogue unit. It’s a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said before leaving for a NATO meeting in Europe starting Wednesday.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance expects a Russian push in “coming weeks” to try to take Ukraine’s entire eastern region of Donbas, and create a land bridge to occupied Crimea. 

– ‘In front of my eyes’ –

Both Washington and the EU have vowed to squeeze Russia’s economy until Putin is forced to halt the war he launched, purportedly to defend two pro-Russia enclaves in the east.

The EU announced a fifth package of measures that would target oil and coal exports and bar Russian ships from European ports, while the US Treasury said Russia would no longer be able to pay its foreign debt with dollars held in American banks.

EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who said she would travel to Kyiv this week, has offered the bloc’s assistance in documenting proof of war crimes.

The Kremlin has denied any civilian killings, claiming that the images emerging from Bucha and other sites are fakes produced by Ukrainian forces, or that the deaths occurred after Russian soldiers pulled out.

But one Bucha resident named Olena told AFP she saw Russian soldiers shoot a man in cold blood after “brutal” troop units, older and rougher than the forces who captured the town, moved in and began spreading fear.

“Right in front of my eyes, they fired on a man who was going to get food at the supermarket,” said the 43-year-old, who did not wish to give her family name.

Despite Olena’s and other firsthand accounts, Moscow’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia rejected Zelensky’s claims of Russian atrocities, telling the Security Council that the “ungrounded accusations… are not confirmed by any eye witnesses.”

Zelensky delivered a forceful rebuttal, airing a graphic, 90-second clip of what he said were images from towns including Bucha, Irpin, Dymerka, and the southern port of Mariupol.

The footage showed partially uncovered dead people, including children, in shallow graves, several bodies in a courtyard, burned corpses in the streets, and victims with hands tied behind their back slumped towards a wall.

In a continuing push to isolate Moscow, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Slovenia expelled dozens of its diplomats suspected of being intelligence operatives, after France and Germany did the same Monday, for a total of some 180 expulsions in 48 hours.

The Kremlin called it a “short-sighted move” that would complicate efforts to negotiate an end to the hostilities.

Putin meanwhile warned of “reprisals” for recent European measures targeting Russian gas giant Gazprom — and said Moscow would “monitor” its food exports to “hostile” nations, raising the spectre of further inflation pressures worldwide as the war endures.

– Mass graves –

Europe’s worst conflict in decades has killed as many as 20,000 people, according to Ukrainian estimates. 

Nearly 4.25 million Ukrainians have fled the country, while an estimated 7.1 million are internally displaced, the United Nations said Tuesday.

Many in Ukraine are bracing for further Russian bombardments, and air raid sirens rang out overnight across much of the country.

Ukrainian officials say over 400 civilian bodies have been recovered from the wider Kyiv region, many of whom were buried in mass graves.

But Zelensky has warned that the deaths in Bucha could be only the tip of the iceberg, saying he had information that even more people had been killed in places like nearby Borodianka.

AFP reporters who briefly visited the Borodianka area saw no bodies in the streets, but locals reported many deaths. The scale of devastation in the town saw buildings flayed open.

“I know five civilians were killed,” said 58-year-old Rafik Azimov. “But we don’t know how many more are left in the basements of the ruined buildings after the bombardments.”

“I buried six people,” another resident, Volodymyr Nahornyi, said. “More people are under the ruins.”

– Cluster bombs used? –

Even where troops have withdrawn, fears remain, with Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko telling residents not to return yet, citing dangers of continued shelling and unexploded munitions.

On Monday, officials in Mykolaiv, on the Black Sea not far from Odessa, said cluster bombs were used against the city in strikes that killed 10 civilians and wounded 46.

Such weapons are banned under a 2008 UN convention but it has not been signed by Russia or Ukraine.

The UN’s undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, told the Security Council there were “credible allegations” Russia had used cluster munitions in populated areas at least 24 times.

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Police and soldiers patrolled the largely empty streets of Peru’s capital Lima Tuesday, monitoring a curfew imposed to curtail protests against rising fuel and toll prices amid growing economic hardship.

Shops and schools were closed and bus services mostly suspended after President Pedro Castillo announced a curfew shortly before midnight Monday for Lima and the neighboring port city of Callao.

But many workers, at hotels or hospitals for example, ignored the shut-down, which was widely criticized on social media. 

The measure took many in Lima by surprise, given that the most violent protests in recent days took place far from the capital.

Many had no choice but to take a taxi or walk to their place of work.

“It was a very late and improvised” announcement, complained Cinthya Rojas, a nutritionist who waited patiently for one of the handful of buses still running to get to work at a hospital east of Lima.

A hotel employee told AFP she had to pay the equivalent of $8, a small fortune on her salary, for a taxi to work.

Some tourists had difficulty finding food, with restaurants and supermarkets closed, but domestic and international flights continued as normal from Jorge Chavez airport, its concessioner said.

Residents of some Lima neighborhoods beat pots and pans at their windows in protest against the lockdown at noon.

– Soaring food prices –

Castillo announced the curfew would last until midnight Tuesday “to reestablish peace” after countrywide protests against fuel and toll price increases on top of biting food inflation.

“There was information from a source that there were going to be acts of vandalism today. That is why we have taken this step,” added Defense Minister Jose Gavidia. 

While Lima was under curfew, protests continued and roads were blocked in several smaller cities elsewhere in Peru.

Like much of the rest of the world, Peru’s economy is reeling from the damages wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

The country’s Consumer Price Index in March saw its highest monthly increase in 26 years, driven by soaring food, transport and education prices, according to the national statistics institute. 

In an attempt to appease protesters, the government over the weekend eliminated the fuel tax and decreed a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage from May 1. 

But the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) — the country’s main trade union federation — considered the measures insufficient and took to the streets again Monday in Lima and several regions in Peru’s north.

Some protesters set fire to toll booths on highways, looted shops, and clashed with police.

Others burnt tires and blocked the north-south Pan-American highway, the country’s most important artery for people and goods.

The disruptions halted public transport and closed schools on Monday.

“I call for calm and serenity,” the leftist president said during his brief late-night TV appearance. 

“Social protest is a constitutional right, but it must be done within the law,” he said.

– ‘Authoritarian measure’ –

The protests were the first against the government since Castillo, a 52-year-old former rural school teacher, took office eight months ago.

Two-thirds of Peruvians disapprove of his rule, according to an Ipsos opinion poll in March.

Castillo’s announcement of a curfew came a week after he escaped impeachment by Congress, where opponents accuse his administration of a “lack of direction” and of allowing corruption in his entourage.

It also coincided with the 30th anniversary of a coup staged by ex-president Alberto Fujimori, jailed over his regime’s bloody campaign against insurgents. 

“The measure dictated by President Pedro Castillo is openly unconstitutional, disproportionate and violates people’s right to individual freedom,” tweeted lawyer Carlos Rivera, a representative of Fujimori’s victims.

Political analyst Luis Benavente told AFP the curfew was “an authoritarian measure” that revealed “ineptitude, incapacity to govern.”

A large proportion of Lima’s 10 million residents work in the informal sector, as street sellers and other traders, meaning the curfew left them without income for the day.

A football match of the Copa Libertadores between Peruvian Club Sporting Cristal and Brazil’s Flamengo, scheduled for Tuesday night in Lima, was also thrown into doubt. 

Castillo was to meet leaders of Congress later Tuesday to “analyze the proposals and measures necessary to find a solution to the crisis facing the country”, according to a statement from parliament.

The United States, Britain and Australia said Tuesday they will begin jointly collaborating on hypersonic weapons and “electronic warfare capabilities”, as part of their new AUKUS alliance aimed at countering China.

The three countries said the joint initiatives will bolster existing efforts to deepen cooperation in numerous areas that they already agreed when forming the new defensive pact last September.

“We… committed today to commence new trilateral cooperation on hypersonics and counter-hypersonics, and electronic warfare capabilities, as well as to expand information sharing and to deepen cooperation on defence innovation,” they said in a joint statement.

“These initiatives will add to our existing efforts to deepen cooperation on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and additional undersea capabilities.

“As our work progresses on these and other critical defense and security capabilities, we will seek opportunities to engage allies and close partners.”

Russia, China, the United States and North Korea have all test-launched hypersonic missiles, with Tuesday’s announcement coming just weeks after Moscow said it had launched them for the first time in its war in Ukraine.

Hypersonic missiles, like traditional ballistic missiles which can deliver nuclear weapons, can fly at more than five times the speed of sound.  

While ballistic missiles fly high into space in an arc to reach their target, a hypersonic weapon flies on a trajectory low in the atmosphere, potentially reaching a target more quickly.

Crucially, a hypersonic missile is manoeuvrable — like the much slower, often subsonic cruise missile — making it much harder to track and defend against.

Russia is seen as the most advanced nation in this field, while China is also aggressively developing the technology, according to the US Congressional Research Service (CRS).

France, Germany, Australia, India and Japan have been working on hypersonics, and Iran, Israel and South Korea have conducted basic research on the technology, the CRS has previously said.

The US, Britain and Australia launched their landmark security pact last September, alongside Canberra scrapping a multi-billion-dollar submarine deal with France that infuriated Paris.

The pact, known as AUKUS, was proclaimed at the time as allowing the three allies to share advanced technologies. 

The EU executive on Tuesday launched a never-used procedure against Hungary that could see the Hungarian government stripped of EU funding for falling short on anticorruption and flouting democratic standards.

The move comes two days after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won re-election with an overwhelming majority, claiming his victory as a win over liberal values defended by Brussels.

The nationalist and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is frequently accused in Brussels of backsliding on democratic norms.

The European Commission “will now send the letter of formal notification to start the conditionality mechanism,” European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said to applause at a plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

The latest clash with Hungary is over its public procurement system, conflict of interests and corruption and could see Budapest lose EU cash if endorsed by a super-majority of the 27 member states.

Orban’s chief of staff Gergely Gulyas urged the European Commission “not to punish Hungarian voters for expressing an opinion not to Brussels’ taste” in the elections.

“Brussels is making a mistake,” he added, “the basic rules of democracy must be accepted by the Commission”.

Gulyas urged the European Union to “return to common sense and dialogue”.

Regularly criticised by the EU for undermining the rule of law, Orban attacked the “Brussels bureaucrats” in his victory speech, after securing a fourth term in office.

The conditionality mechanism was created in 2020, after a summit at the height of the coronavirus pandemic that agreed common borrowing to build an 800-billion-euro ($900 billion) pile of grants and loans for EU countries to recover.

Budget hawks, including the Netherlands and Nordic countries, demanded the conditionality mechanism to put guard rails around the spending of taxpayers’ money.

– ‘Long overdue’ –

Hungary and Poland challenged the new procedure in the EU’s top court. But the European Court of Justice in February greenlit its use, saying the European Union “must be able to defend those values”.

The commission has been under pressure from the European Parliament to apply the conditionality mechanism against Poland and Hungary. The legislature launched legal action to make the commission act.

“This is long overdue. The failure of the Hungarian government to manage public money transparently is well known and documented,” said French MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield.

“How can a member state use EU funds properly when the independence of the judiciary has been destroyed and there are no sufficient safeguards against corruption?” she added.

The use of the mechanism adds to a long list of other procedures the commission has taken over rule-of-law concerns against Hungary and Poland that has included court ordered fines.

The issue of corruption is also the reason for the commission’s blocking of the Hungarian recovery plan, worth 7.2 billion euros in European subsidies.

Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine:

– ‘Act immediately’ –

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky challenges the United Nations to “act immediately” or “dissolve yourself altogether” during an address in which he shows harrowing footage of dead bodies — including children — he says were victims of Russian atrocities.

Likening Russia’s actions in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities to violence carried out by “terrorists” such as the Islamic State group, Zelensky calls on the Security Council to expel Russia “so it cannot block decisions about its own aggression, its own war.”

– Moscow denies atrocities –

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the discovery of bodies in Bucha was a “provocation” aimed at scuppering talks between Moscow and Kyiv.

“A question arises: What purpose does this blatantly untruthful provocation serve? We are led to believe it is to find a pretext to torpedo the ongoing negotiations,” Lavrov says in a video message broadcast on Russian television.

– 600,000 evacuated to Russia –

Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia says over 600,000 people have been evacuated into Russia during the conflict in Ukraine, denying Kyiv’s claim of mass deportations.

“And we’re not talking about any kind of coercion or abduction, as our Western partners like to present this, but rather the voluntary decision by these people…” he tells the Security Council.

– Donbas onslaught awaited –

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says that, after withdrawing most of its troops from northern Ukraine, Moscow aims to capture the “entire” Donbas region in the east, with the aim of creating a land corridor from Russia to annexed Crimea.

– Cluster munitions –

UN undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, tells the Security Council of “credible” claims Russia has used indiscriminate cluster munitions two dozen times in populated parts of Ukraine.

– War chest frozen –

Britain has frozen some $350 billion (321 billion euros) in assets from the “war chest” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says during a visit to Warsaw.

She says this action meant that “over 60 percent of the regime’s $604 billion foreign currency reserves” were now “unavailable” to the Russian government.

– US squeezes Russia payments –

The United States bars Moscow from making debt payments using funds held at American banks — a move that takes Russia a step closer to default.

“Russia must choose between draining remaining valuable dollar reserves or new revenue coming in, or default,” a Treasury spokesperson tells AFP.

– EU to target Russian coal –

The EU proposes a ban on Russian coal imports and on Russian ships entering European ports.

“Russia is waging a cruel, ruthless war, also against Ukraine’s civilian population. We need to sustain utmost pressure at this critical point,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says.

– Putin warning on food –

Putin retaliates by saying Moscow will “carefully monitor” food exports to “hostile” nations.

He cites “global food shortages” for the need in caution in exporting “to countries that are clearly hostile towards us.”

– Diplomats kicked out –

Italy, Spain, Denmark and Slovenia expel a raft of Russian diplomats bringing to almost 200 the number ordered home by EU allies in 48 hours.

The Kremlin laments a “short-sighted move” that will “further complicate our communication” with Europe.

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French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday accused his far-right election rival Marine Le Pen of being too close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, denying he had indulged the Kremlin over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine risk becoming a key issue in France’s election campaign this month, as polls project Le Pen could make a serious challenge to the centrist Macron in the second round run-off on April 24.

“You should not be looking at me if you want to find complacency towards Vladimir Putin, or Russian financing,” he told reporters on a campaign visit to Brittany ahead of the first round of polls Sunday.

“You should be looking at the other candidates. Don’t forget that,” he said on a cam.

While Macron did not name Le Pen by name, his comments were a clear reference to the far-right National Rally (RN) leader who was hosted by Putin in 2017 and whose party is continuing to pay back a loan of some nine million euros from a Russian creditor.

Le Pen has sought to distance herself from Putin after invasion of Ukraine, saying he is “not the same person” she had met in 2017 and speaking of “war crimes” after the discovery of corpses outside Kyiv.

Macron has kept up dialogue with Putin even after the launch of the Russian invasion on February 24 but said that it was at the request of President Volodymyr Zelensky who believed such talks were still useful.

“I will do so, so long as the Ukrainian president asks me to have a dialogue with Russia, so long as France can play a role in making the negotiations progress, obtaining things on the humanitarian level and preparing for peace.”

His comments also came after bitter criticism from Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki over Macron’s policy of keeping up talks with Putin despite the mounting outrage over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

“How many times have you negotiated with Putin and what have you achieved? We do not discuss, we do not negotiate with criminals. Criminals have to be fought against,” Morawiecki said Monday, addressing Macron.

“Nobody negotiated with Hitler. Would you negotiate with Hitler, with Stalin, with Pol Pot?” he asked.

Macron said that he had never used the situation in Ukraine for political ends and said he would only visit Zelensky in Kyiv if it could bring results.

“If it can bring something and have a useful effect I would do it either before or after” the presidential election, he said.