Zelenskyy to address UN Security Council amid outrage over civilian deaths: Live Ukraine updates
bodies of 410 civilians were found in Kyiv-area towns that were recently retaken from Russian forces.
The Russian withdrawal from towns around Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, revealed the corpses. The outcry has led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin, including a possible cutoff of gas and oil imports from Russia. Germany and France reacted by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they were spies. U.S. President Joe Biden said Russian leader Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy plans to address the U.N. body after it receives briefings from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. U.N. officials are trying to arrange a cease-fire.
“It’s very difficult to conduct negotiations when you see what they did (in Bucha) ,” Zelenskyy said, adding that “dead people have been found in barrels, basements, strangled, tortured” in the suburb and elsewhere.
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WHAT IS A WAR CRIME? Ukraine accuses Russia of them, but what exactly constitutes a war crime?
Latest developments
►Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev dismissed the report of civilian deaths as propaganda, claiming Ukrainian forces killed their own people “in a bid to dehumanize Russia and tarnish its image as much as possible.”
► E.U. Commission: President Ursula von der Leyen will travel to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy this week.
► The war will have a worldwide economic impact far beyond Europe: a World Bank report released Tuesday predicted slowing growth and rising poverty in Asia during the coming months due to disruptions to supplies of commodities, financial strains, and higher prices.
►The Ukrainian government says 18 journalists have been killed and 13 wounded in the country since the war began. In addition, eight have been abducted or taken prisoner and three are missing.
Website links Ukraine refugees with hosts around the globe
A group of Harvard University students have created a website to help Ukrainian refugees find housing around the world.
Ukrainetakeshelter.com, created by Avi Schiffmann and Marco Burstein, encourages everyone with space in their homes to post a listing. Refugees and hosts must provide identity verification either through government issued ID card or passport. Over 18,000 prospective hosts have signed up on the site. On a recent day, Burstein and Schiffman logged 800,000 users.
Burstein said he, Schiffman and Irish software engineer Daniel Conlon have been “blown away” by the response.
“We’ve heard all sorts of amazing stories of hosts and refugees getting connected all over the world,” Burstein said. “We have hosts in almost any country you can imagine from Hungary and Romania and Poland to Canada to Australia.”