On Monday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky referred to Russian troops as “murderers, torturers, rapists, and looters” after dozens of dead were discovered near Kyiv, sparking international outcry and threats of further penalties against Moscow.

Local officials said they were compelled to dig communal graves to bury the dead gathering in the streets, including those who were discovered with their wrists bound behind their backs, in pictures that shocked foreign capitals more than a month after Russia’s invasion.

Despite Russian claims of guilt, Western leaders, NATO, and the United Nations all expressed sorrow at allegations of civilian fatalities in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, and elsewhere.

“Concentrated darkness has come to our land,” Zelensky warned in his nightly video message.

Speaking in Ukrainian, he called Russian troops “murderers, torturers, rapists, looters, who call themselves the army and who deserve only death after what they did.”

“I want every mother of every Russian soldier to witness the bodies of the dead people in Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel,” he said in Russian.

“I want everyone of the Russian Federation’s leaders to observe how their commands are being carried out.”

As Moscow refocuses its forces on southern Ukraine, Zelensky announced the formation of a special commission to probe fatalities in locations where Russian troops have withdrawn surrounding the city.

The exact number of victims is still unknown, but Ukrainian prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova stated 410 civilian bodies had been found so far.

Anatoly Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, told AFP that 280 victims were buried in mass graves since burying them in cemeteries within fire range was difficult.

Maxar, a satellite imagery company, revealed images that it claimed showed a mass burial in the grounds of a church in the town.

Russian military originally refused to let people to bury the dead in Bucha, according to municipal worker Serhii Kaplychnyi.

“They said to let them lie there while it was chilly.”

They were eventually able to recover the bodies, he said. “With a tractor, we excavated a mass grave and buried everyone.”

Images emerging from the region have alarmed the UN, which said it couldn’t rule out the possibility that some of the dead were fighters or died of natural causes.

‘Putin will bear the brunt of the consequences.’
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, accused Russia of a “planned massacre,” while Sergiy Nikiforov, Zelensky’s spokesman, said the killings in Bucha “look exactly like war crimes.”

Russia’s defence ministry retaliated, claiming that “not a single local inhabitant” in Bucha had been harmed.

It accused Kyiv of blasting the city’s southern suburbs and fabricating corpse photographs for Western media in “another production.”

Russia has sought a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, according to Moscow’s deputy ambassador to the UN, “in light of terrible provocation by Ukrainian radicals in Bucha.”

At least 20 dead, all dressed in civilian clothing, were strewn over a single street, according to AFP reporters in the town, and photographs of the deaths have sparked global outrage and calls for further sanctions against Russia.

The fatalities were described by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “a punch in the gut,” while NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg described the bloodshed as “horrific and “absolutely unacceptable.”

New sanctions will be decided “in the next days,” according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“The consequences would be felt by [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin and his followers,” he added, as his defence minister floated the potential of a gas embargo.

Other European officials, such as Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, have stated that the EU “must respond decisively with stiffer measures,” while Zelensky has stated that “a fresh package of sanctions against Russia will undoubtedly be implemented.”

However, as Moscow refocuses its attention on the south and east of the country in an attempt to construct a landlink between seized Crimea and the Russian-backed separatist statelets of Donetsk and Luhansk, the Ukrainian leader cautioned that the worst was yet to come.

“Russian military still control occupied territories in other districts,” he added, adding that after the invaders were expelled, “much worse things could be uncovered there,” including “many more deaths and tortures.”

He also made an appearance at the Grammys in a taped message, imploring people to “speak the truth about this war… help us in any manner you can, any, but not quiet.”

‘Something dreadful is about to happen.’
According to Ukrainian estimates, 20,000 people have been murdered in Europe’s worst battle in decades, which was launched by Russia’s invasion on February 24.

According to the UN refugee agency, about 4.2 million Ukrainians have fled the nation, with around 40,000 entering neighbouring countries in the last 24 hours alone.

Women, children, and the elderly boarded trains in the eastern city of Kramatorsk to evacuate the Donbas region.

“There’s a rumour that something horrible is on the way,” Svetlana, a volunteer who was helping to organise the gathering on the station platform, said.

Russia has stepped up its operations in Ukraine’s south and east, including assaults on the vital Black Sea port of Odessa on Sunday that Moscow claimed were aimed at an oil refinery and gasoline stockpiles.

“The first explosion jolted us awake, followed by a flash in the sky, then another, then another. I lost track of how many I had “Mykola, a 22-year-old local, said AFP.

Russian soldiers blasted a residential area in Kharkiv’s eastern city on Sunday, killing seven people and injuring 34 others, according to local prosecutors said in a statement.

Recent Russian air activity has been focused on southeastern Ukraine, according to the British defence ministry, with fierce fighting continuing in the destroyed and beleaguered southern city of Mariupol.

In a tweet, the ministry stated, “The city continues to be subjected to intensive, indiscriminate strikes.”

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s top humanitarian envoy, is due to arrive in Kyiv soon after arriving in Moscow on Sunday in an attempt to bring the violence to a halt.

Peace talks are set to resume by video on Monday, though Russia’s lead negotiator Vladimir Medinsky suggested a top-level meeting between Zelensky and Putin was premature.