UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday visited sites of alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, decrying war as “an absurdity in the 21st century” and urging Russia to cooperate with an international investigation into atrocities.
Making his first visit to Ukraine since Russia launched a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, Guterres toured several towns and villages outside Kyiv, where Russian forces are accused of killing civilians.
“I imagine my family in one of those houses that is now destroyed and black. I see my granddaughters running away in panic,” the UN head said in Borodianka, a ruined town northeast of the Ukrainian capital.
Photo: AFP
“The war is an absurdity in the 21st century. The war is evil,” he added.
In neighboring Bucha, where dozens of bodies in civilian clothes, some with their hands tied behind their backs, were discovered this month after a Russian withdrawal, Guterres backed an International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine.
“I appeal to the Russian Federation to accept, to cooperate with the ICC,” he implored the Kremlin.
The UN head was to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On Tuesday, Guterres met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, repeating calls for Moscow and Kyiv to work together to set up “safe and effective” humanitarian corridors in Ukraine.
A UN representative to Ukraine yesterday said she was preparing for a “hopeful” evacuation from the encircled port city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine, where Kyiv says civilians and injured fighters are trapped.
“The UN is fully mobilized to help save Ukrainian lives and to assist those in need,” UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ukraine Osnat Lubrani wrote on Twitter.
In total, 5,372,854 people have fled Ukraine as refugees since the start of the invasion, with 55,635 leaving in a 24-hour period, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said yesterday.
In Washington, the White House yesterday proposed using assets seized from Russian oligarchs to compensate Ukraine for damage caused by Moscow’s invasion.
It would enable “transfer of the proceeds of forfeited kleptocratic property to Ukraine to remediate harms of Russian aggression,” the White House said in a statement.
The compensation idea is part of new proposed rules ratcheting up economic punishment on the Kremlin.
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