President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of committing genocide and attempting to wipe out “the whole nation” of Ukraine, a day after mass graves were discovered and apparently civilians killed near Kyiv.
“This is genocide. The eradication of an entire country and people,” Zelensky told the CBS program Face the Nation, according to a transcript provided by the network.
“We are citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. It is about the destruction and destruction of all these nationalities,” Zelensky said amid international outrage over the behavior of Russian troops in Ukraine.
On 24 February, three days after the invasion began, Ukraine filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, accusing Russia of “planning the genocide”.
In interviews broadcast on Sunday – after footage circulated around the world of civilian bodies on the streets of the city of Buka, near Kyiv, and a Ukrainian official saying 280 bodies were buried in a mass grave there – Zelensky proceeded.
“We are citizens of Ukraine and we do not want to be subject to the policy of the Russian Federation. That is why we are being destroyed and destroyed,” Zelensky said according to a CBS transcript.
“And this is happening in 21st century Europe. So it is the torture of the whole country,” he said.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.
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