Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said the Kremlin-ordered attack on his country amounted to genocide, after local officials reported scores of civilians had been killed in the towns of Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel near the capital.

Mr Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s refusal to be subdued to Russia was the reason “we are being destroyed and exterminated”, describing the war to the US network CBS as “the torture of the whole nation”.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dymtro Kuleba, said Russia was “worse than Isis”.

Witnesses of alleged atrocities in Bucha said Russian soldiers, who have now withdrawn from the area, had fired on men fleeing the town, and had killed civilians at will.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign ministry said that footage of dead civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha had been “ordered” by the United States as part of a plot to blame Russia.

“Who are the masters of provocation? Of course the United States and Nato,” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview on state television late on Sunday. Ms Zakharova said the immediate western outcry over the images of dead civilians indicated the story had been part of a plan to sully Russia’s reputation.

“In this case, it seems to me that the fact that these statements [ABOUT RUSSIA]were made in the first minutes after these materials appeared leaves no doubt as to who ‘ordered’ this story.”

Humanitarian corridor

Taras Schevchenko (43) said Russian soldiers had refused to allow men to leave through a humanitarian corridor, instead shooting at them as they fled across an open field.

Bodies, he said, were scattered on the pavements, with some of those killed having been “squashed by tanks, like animal skin rugs”.

Mr Shevchenko’s mother, Yevdokia (77) said she had witnessed an elderly man who had challenged a Russian soldier being shot dead as his wife stood next to him. “They shot him dead, and ordered the woman to leave,” she said. The accounts could not be independently verified.

Reporters from Agence France-Presse saw at least 20 bodies, all in civilian clothing, strewn across a single street in the town of Bucha on Friday. One had his hands tied behind his back with a white cloth, and his Ukrainian passport left open beside his body.

“All these people were shot,” Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told AFP, adding that a further 280 bodies had been buried in mass graves in the town.

The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, said: “I am deeply shocked by the images of civilians killed in Bucha, Ukraine. It is essential that an independent investigation leads to effective accountability.”

War crimes

UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the killings added to evidence of Russian war crimes, while the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, expressed shock about the “terrible and horrifying” footage from Bucha.”

Streets littered with bodies. Bodies buried in makeshift conditions. There is talk of women, children and the elderly among the victims,” Mr Scholz said.

The British ambassador to Ukraine, Melinda Simmons, said it was clear that rape had been used as a weapon of war by Russian forces. She said: “Women raped in front of their kids, girls in front of their families, as a deliberate act of subjugation. Rape is a war crime.”

Germany’s vice-chancellor, Robert Habeck, condemned the killings of civilians in the town of Bucha as a “terrible war crime [THAT]cannot go unanswered” and called for a strengthening of sanctions.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, described the killings at Bucha as “a punch to the gut” and joined western allies in vowing to document the atrocities to hold the perpetrators to account.

The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, said he was shocked by “haunting images of atrocities committed by [THE]Russian army in liberated region of Kyiv”, adding that “further EU sanctions and support are on their way”.

The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she was “appalled by reports of unspeakable horrors in areas from which Russia is withdrawing”. An independent investigation was urgently needed, she said, and “perpetrators of war crimes will be held accountable”.

‘Provocation’

Russia for its part tried to paint the situation in Bucha as somehow representing a “provocation” by Ukraine intended to disrupt peace talks. The Kremlin’s foreign ministry said Russia was seeking a UN security council meeting on the matter.

Russia denied responsibility for the Bucha killing of civilians. Its defence ministry described the photos and videos as “another staged performance by the Kyiv regime”, echoing a similar claim made after the bombing of a children’s and maternity hospital in Mariupol.

Russia has repeatedly claimed, without proof, that Ukraine has staged such atrocities, but the Kremlin line is starkly contradicted by conditions on the ground and ample evidence of Russian attacks on civilian targets.

Ukraine’s minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, urged the ICC and international organisations to come to the region to collect evidence of Russian war crimes.

Sanctions

At a Brussels summit last week, the EU’s 27 leaders agreed to “move quickly with further coordinated robust sanctions” against Russia and its ally Belarus, but they have been divided about next steps.

Germany, whose industrial economy is heavily dependent on Russian gas, has resisted calls for an immediate ban on Russian fossil fuels, angering Poland and the Baltic states, which would like the most stringent measures against the Kremlin’s war machine.

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, who cruised to victory in parliamentary elections on Sunday, has also faced criticism from Ukraine for his past support for Russia.

Over the weekend Mr Zelenskiy renewed his attack on Orban, saying he had failed to show moral leadership and lacked honesty. “He is virtually the only one in Europe to openly support Mr Putin,” Mr Zelenskiy said.

On Saturday, Latvian authorities announced that all three Baltic states had stopped importing Russian gas since April 1st. Lithuania’s president, Gitanes Nausda, said his country was no longer importing Russian gas. “If we can do it, the rest of Europe can too,” he wrote on Twitter.– Guardian