Zelensky demands world ‘act immediately’ to halt Russian attacks

KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine’s president urged the UN Security Council on Tuesday to take immediate action against Moscow, calling for "accountability" for atrocities against civilians, as fears grow that Russia is preparing new offensives to seize territory in the east and south.

People "were killed in their apartments, houses... civilians were crushed by tanks while sitting in their cars in the middle of the road," Volodymyr Zelensky said in a sombre video message to the UN council in New York.

"Accountability must be inevitable," he said, while calling for Russia’s exclusion from the Security Council after six weeks of heavy bombardments of Ukraine. "Are you ready to close the UN? And the time of international law is gone? If your answer is no, then you need to act immediately," he said.

His address came after global outrage over the harrowing discoveries of civilian victims in Bucha and other towns near Kyiv after Russian troops pulled back, which Zelensky and other officials have denounced as war crimes and attempted "genocide".

"What we’ve seen in Bucha is not the random act of a rogue unit. It’s a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said before leaving for a Nato meeting in Europe starting on Wednesday. Washington and the EU have promised more sanctions to squeeze Russia’s economy and force President Vladimir Putin to halt the war he launched six weeks ago, purportedly to defend pro-Russia enclaves in Ukraine’s east.

"In the coming weeks, we expect a further Russian push in the eastern and southern Ukraine to try to take the entire Donbas and to create a land bridge to occupied Crimea," Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said.

The EU announced a fifth package of measures that would target oil and coal exports and prohibit Russian ships from European ports, while the US Treasury said Russia would no longer be able to pay its foreign debt with dollars held in American banks.

EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who said she would travel to Kyiv this week, has offered the bloc’s assistance in documenting proof of war crimes. The Kremlin has denied any civilian killings and claimed that the images are fakes produced by Ukraine forces, or that the deaths occurred after Russian soldiers pulled out of the areas.

But one resident in Bucha, Olena, told AFP she saw Russian soldiers shoot a man in cold blood as units of "brutal" older troops sowed fear in the town. "Right in front of my eyes, they fired on a man who was going to get food at the supermarket," said the 43-year-old, who did not wish to give her family name.

In response Spain, Italy, Denmark and Slovenia expelled dozens of Russian diplomats suspected of being intelligence operatives, after France and Germany did the same on Monday, for a total of some 180 expulsions in just 48 hours.

Putin warned of reprisals for what the Kremlin called a "short-sighted move" that would complicate efforts to negotiate an end to the hostilities. He also said Moscow would "monitor" its food exports to "hostile" nations, raising the spectre of further inflation pressures worldwide as the conflict endures.