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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “indeed, this is genocide,” referring to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s vicious attack on his country that has seen hospitals and schools targeted by rockets, as well as disturbing new images of the bodies of executed civilians strewn throughout the streets of a suburb of the capital Kyiv.
“Indeed, this is genocide,” Zelensky told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” in a snippet of an interview that will air later Sunday morning. “The elimination of the whole nation, of the people.”
“We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than a hundred nationalities. This is about destruction and extermination of all these nationalities,” the Ukrainian president said.
“We are the citizens of Ukraine and we don’t want to be subdued to the policy of the Russian Federation. This is the reason we are being destroyed and exterminated. And this is happening in the Europe of the 21st century. So this is the torture of the whole nation,” Zelensky told host Margaret Brennan.
The disturbing and graphic scenes of people executed, many with their hands bound behind them, and their bodies left uncovered in the streets were revealed Saturday when Ukrainian forces retook control of Bucha, a suburb of the capital Kyiv. Some of the victims, mostly men in civilian clothes, had been shot in the back of the head.
The reports also said about 300 people were buried in a mass grave in the city in northwest Kyiv.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken wouldn’t say whether the atrocities committed in Bucha or elsewhere in Ukraine constitute genocide, but he cautioned against allowing such horrors to become normalized.
“You can’t help but see these images as a punch to the gut,” Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
America’s top diplomat said the administration believed that even before Russia launched the invasion on Feb. 24 that its troops would “commit atrocities,” including war crimes, and has been working to document the evidence.
“But I think the most important thing is we can’t become numb to this. We can’t normalize this.
This is the reality of what’s going on every single day. As long as Russia’s brutality against Ukraine continues. That’s why it needs to come to an end,” Blinken said.
He was asked if the savagery in Ukraine constitutes genocide.
“We will look hard and document everything that we see, put it all together, make sure that the relevant institutions and organizations that are looking at this, including the State Department, have everything they need to assess exactly what took place in Ukraine, who is responsible and what it amounts to,” he said.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he would “strongly welcome” an investigation by the International Criminal Court into the deaths in Bucha amid allegations that were executed by Russian forces.
“It is a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades. And it’s horrific and it’s absolutely unacceptable that civilians are targeted and killed. And it just underlines the importance that this war must end,” Stoltenberg said on CNN when asked if the act was genocide.
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