Chantel Rodriguez

Staff writer

cvr5570@psu.edu 

As Russian forces left Bucha, Ukraine, images of the mass graves and bodies of civilians on the streets and backyards intensified calls to carry out war crimes charges against Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

In Bucha, 280 people were buried in separate mass graves, as mentioned by Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Reporters from the Associated Press said they saw the bodies of at least 21 people in various spots around the neighborhood. 

The evidence suggests that Russian soldiers were ruthless and sadistic in their tactics against innocent civilians. 

Russian authorities have since rejected pictures of the dead civilians in Bucha as fake and blamed Ukraine for the killings of their civilians to persuade other leaders of Russia’s involvement in the war. 

Biden joined international leaders who slammed Russia after details surfaced of the crimes. Ukrainian officials stated that 410 civilians were in communal graves. A mother killed by a sniper walking with her family to get a thermos of tea, and another woman held captive and abused sexually. Many victims’ hands were tied behind their backs with gunshot wounds to the head.

Images of the bodies thrown around the street surfaced over the weekend after the withdrawal of Russian forces from that specific area, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urging for an end to the war crimes Russia has committed. 

The war crimes in Bucha have garnered attention. And many are outraged. 

President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and many leaders outside of Ukraine called for war crime investigations and intensified sanctions on Russia.

“Since the aggression, we’ve said that we believe that Russian forces have committed war crimes,” Blinken continued, “We’ve been working to document that to provide the information we have to the relevant institutions and organizations that will put all of this together. There needs to be accountability for it,” he told CNN.

A prestigious war crime prosecutor, Karim Khan, traveled to Ukraine for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to examine what had occurred and comment.

“The law is clear on this. It is a crime to target civilians intentionally. It is a crime to target civilian objects intentionally,” Karim Khan, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, told CNN’s, Anderson Cooper. President Joe Biden had some words also on the situation.

President Biden sternly responded to his opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden placed the blame only on Putin and his military for the killings in Bucha. 

“You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal,” the president said. “Well, the truth is that you saw what happened in Bucha. He is a war criminal.”

Biden said the U.S. would continue to support Ukraine by sending weapons for the fight and imposing new sanctions on Russia but did not mention those specific sanctions and has no plans for a regime change. 

The ICC defines genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and aggression. 

Zelensky described, after being asked on a CBS live interview, if he felt that Russia was committing war crimes out of Bucha, and Zelensky’s reply was: “Indeed. This is genocide.”

One thing is for sure is that Russia will no longer have the ability to deny the atrocities occurring at the hands of their troops, especially after Bucha. Zelenski and several other countries will continue to closely monitor and document all occurrences for trials on the war crimes committed.