The Ukrainian city of Bucha’s Mayor Anatolii Fedoruk demanded on Monday that Russia faces an international war tribunal for atrocities that his city suffered in March in the hands of the Russian troops.
Fedoruk, who is currently visiting the United States, demanded that the world holds Moscow accountable for the atrocities its troop perpetrated during its occupation of Ukraine, telling Washington think tank the Wilson Centre that Russia has never been punished or brought to the war tribunal.
While the city was under siege, Fedoruk was in hiding to coordinate assistance for the few thousand citizens who stayed behind in Bucha during the occupation, and he helped spread the word of Russian war crimes with his interviews with international media over the spring and summer of 2022.
According to Ukraine and charities, Russian forces left a trail of evidence of its crimes during their occupation of Bucha – a town about 30km northwest of Kyiv- from March 4 to 31, 2022.
Richard Weir, crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, emphasized in his report in April that nearly every corner in Bucha was a crime scene, and it felt like death was everywhere.
Human Rights Watch’s report apparently contains extensive evidence of enforced disappearances and torture, summary executions, and other unlawful killings, actions which would constitute war crimes and potential crimes against humanity by Russian forces against Ukrainian civilians.
While repeatedly and strenuously denying any accusations of killing civilians in Ukraine, Moscow has claimed that Ukraine staged the graves and corpses discovered in Bucha to tarnish Russia.
During the event at the Wilson Centre, former US ambassador and the center’s president Mark Green said that 458 bodies – 419 of which with signs of torture and other mass trauma – were recovered from Bucha’s ruins.
According to Green, Bucha is the world’s first definitive look at how the Russian troops employ atrocity as a deliberate tactic in Ukraine.
