Russians Destroyed The City of Bucha But it was Not The Buildings Alone, They R Replaceable
Cora Engelbrecht
The New York Times
Here are the latest developments in the war in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky warned on Monday that tens of thousands of Russian troops were preparing a renewed assault against eastern Ukraine, where intense bombardments over the weekend left dozens dead or wounded and civilians continued to flee along treacherous evacuation routes.
Officials in eastern Ukraine warned civilians still living in the region that time was running out to escape, as newly released satellite images showed an eight-mile-long convoy of Russian armored vehicles and trucks with towed artillery moving east of Kharkiv, the nation’s second-largest city.
“Russia is preparing another offensive, hoping to break our national resistance after all,” Mr. Zelensky said via video link to lawmakers in South Korea, whom he implored to send Ukraine more armored vehicles, anti-tank weapons and other military equipment via. “The occupiers concentrated tens of thousands of soldiers and a huge amount of equipment to try to strike again.”
While roughly 13,400 civilians have been evacuated from eastern Ukraine since Friday, according to Ukrainian officials, the road to safety remains fraught with peril, with reports across the country of civilians being killed as they try to escape. Officials in the eastern town of Kramatorsk on Monday updated the death toll from a Russian missile strike against a crowded train station to at least 57 people, with another 109 wounded.
The recent attacks on civilian targets come as atrocities committed over the past seven weeks of war come into sharper focus. On a road connecting recently liberated towns surrounding Kyiv, a local mayor shared images of charred corpses and mangled bodies piled on top of each other. As many as 50 bodies have been discovered along one stretch of the highway running south from Kyiv to the city of Zhytomyr, according to Taras Didych, the mayor of Dmytrivka district, who called it “the road of death.”
In other major developments:
As the Russian advance on Kyiv stalled in the face of fierce resistance, residents of Bucha said Moscow’s forces slid into a campaign of terror and revenge. Reporters and photographers for The New York Times spent more than a week with city officials, coroners, and scores of witnesses in Bucha, uncovering new details of execution-style atrocities against civilians.
A barrage of Russian attacks on the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine left at least 11 people dead on Sunday, including a child, and 14 injured, the regional governor said.
Karl Nehammer, the Austrian chancellor, met with President Vladimir V. Putin in Moscow on Monday, becoming the first European leader to hold in-person talks with the Russian leader since the start of the war.
French experts arrived in Ukraine to help investigate possible war crimes committed by Russian troops, in what the French ambassador said was the first such assistance offered by a foreign nation since the war began.
Ukraine’s economy is expected to shrink by roughly 45 percent this year, the World Bank said. Russia’s economy is already in a “deep recession” and expected to fall by 11 percent, the bank reported.
The street corner where Tetiana Sichkar was killed on March 24. Russian soldiers kept guard behind the wall.
 |
| French experts arrive to document possible war crimes |
Investigators and cemetery workers documented the dead in Bucha, Ukraine. France announced that it sent experts to aid in the gathering of evidence of atrocities.
Investigators and cemetery workers documented the dead in Bucha, Ukraine. France announced that it sent experts to aid in the gathering of evidence of atrocities. Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times
French experts arrived in Ukraine on Monday to help investigate possible war crimes committed by Russian troops, according to French authorities.
France’s interior, justice, and foreign ministries said in a statement that two coroners and more than a dozen crime scene investigators would help identify bodies and gather evidence in Bucha, where Russian troops have been accused of indiscriminately killing dozens of civilians.
France is “resolutely committed” to assisting Ukraine and international bodies such as the International Criminal Court, and to prevent “unbearable acts that constitute war crimes” from going unpunished, the statement said.
“True to its values, France will not look away in the face of such atrocities,” it added.
The team of investigators that arrived in Ukraine has expertise in ballistics and explosives, and can help gather and analyze forensic evidence including DNA and fingerprints, the statement said.
Étienne de Poncins, the French ambassador to Ukraine, greeted the team after its arrival in Lviv, in western Ukraine. He said on Twitter that France was the first nation to provide Ukraine with such assistance.
“They will be at work tomorrow,” Mr. de Poncins wrote.
France has also sent personnel to the International Criminal Court, the French ministries noted in their statement, including two additional judges, 10 investigators and a funding bump of 500,000 euros, or about $546,000, on top of France’s usual annual contribution to the court’s budget.
The I.C.C., which experts believe represents the best chance for accountability for Russian forces in the conflict, announced in March that it had launched a criminal investigation into possible war crimes.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak
 |
A stricken Ukrainian city empties, and those who remain fear what’s next. |
The parking lot of an apartment building in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Sunday was littered with debris from Russian bombings. So are the schools.
The parking lot of an apartment building in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Sunday was littered with debris from Russian bombings. Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Residents of this eastern city have started to hunker down, preparing for a siege. Most small shops have been closed, a few grocery stores remain open and the city square, once teeming with people during these warm spring days, is all but empty.
Two days after more than 50 people were killed on its platforms by a missile strike, the only sounds at the Kramatorsk railway station on Sunday morning were a distant air-raid siren and the rhythmic sweeping of broken glass.
With Moscow’s decision to shift the focus of its war to eastern Ukraine, the people who remain in Kramatorsk fear that they will soon be shelled into oblivion, like the residents of Kharkiv and Mariupol, two other cities that have been ruthlessly assaulted by Russian forces. It feels like an assault here is inevitable: Cutting off Kramatorsk would partly cut off Ukrainian forces fighting in the eastern breakaway regions where Russia is consolidating.
On Sunday, Lidia, 65, and Valentyna, 72, dear friends, dressed in nice clothes and decided to leave their lifelong homes together. Both women declined to provide their surnames.
“After what happened at the railway station, we can hear the explosions getting closer and closer,” Lidia said. Through tears, Valentyna added, “I can’t take these sirens anymore.” Their destination, as with millions of other Ukrainians since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, was somewhere vaguely west — just anywhere farther away.
“We need to leave because we can’t bear it anymore,” Lidia said.
Comments