President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of committing genocide and attempting to eliminate the “whole nation” of Ukraine, a day after the discovery of mass graves and apparently executed civilians near Kyiv.
“This is genocide. The elimination of the whole nation and the people,” Zelensky told the CBS program Face the Nation, according to a transcript provided by the network on Sunday.
“We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities,” Zelensky said amid a chorus of international outrage over the behavior of Russian troops in Ukraine.
Three days after the invasion started on February 24, Ukraine filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice in The Hague accusing Russia of “planning acts of genocide.”
In the interview aired on Sunday — after footage aired around the world of civilian bodies littering the streets of the town of Bucha near Kyiv, and a Ukrainian official said 280 bodies were buried in a mass grave there — Zelensky seemed to go further.
“We are citizens of Ukraine and we don’t want to be subdued to the policy of Russian Federation. This is the reason we are being destroyed and exterminated,” Zelensky said, according to the CBS transcript.
“And this is happening in the Europe of the 21st century. So this is the torture of the whole nation,” he added.
At the same time, Zelensky stressed he had no option but to put his personal feelings of anger and revulsion aside and pursue an eventual peace dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It’s difficult to say how, after all what has been done, we can have any kind of negotiations with Russia. That’s on the personal level, but as a president I have to do it,” he said
However any negotiations would be conditional on a ceasefire.
“I can’t even have a meeting when the shelling is going on. So first the ceasefire. Then we can have a meeting with the Russian president,” said Zelensky.
Russia denies killing civilians in Ukraine’s Bucha
Russia has denied Ukrainian allegations that it had killed civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, describing footage and photographs of dead bodies as a “provocation” and a “staged performance” by Kyiv.
“All the photos and videos published by the Kyiv regime, allegedly testifying to the ‘crimes’ of Russian servicemen in the city of Bucha, Kyiv region, are another provocation,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement.
/Argumentum.al
