Zelenskyy vows justice for 'every committed crime'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday said the legal basis is being put in place to bring "culpable Russian troops" to justice over alleged atrocities.

Moscow is facing global revulsion and accusations of war crimes after the Russian pullout from the outskirts of Kyiv revealed streets strewn with corpses of what appeared to be civilians, some of whom had seemingly been killed at close range.

The grisly images of battered bodies left out in the open or hastily buried led to calls for tougher sanctions against the Kremlin, namely a cutoff of fuel imports from Russia.

Germany and France reacted by expelling dozens of Russian diplomats, suggesting they were spies, and U.S. President Joe Biden said Russian leader Vladimir Putin should be tried for war crimes.

Zelenskyy warns 'repositioning of troops is just a military tactic'

Russia initiated a full-fledged war against Ukraine nearly two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognising the independence of breakaway regions Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin's action came despite the West's repetitive warning and speculations about his ill intention to invade Ukraine. On February 24, the Russian troops started a military operation against Ukraine. Since then, it has been bombarding several cities in Ukraine, resulting in the killing of thousands of civilians.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during a televised address to the nation, warned that Russian withdrawals from the north and centre of the country were just a "military tactic" to build up forces for new powerful attacks in the southeast. "We know their intentions. We know that they are moving away from those areas where we hit them to focus on other, very important ones where it may be difficult for us," he said. "There will be battles ahead," Zelenskyy added. He appealed to his Russian counterpart to end the war immediately but added that he would not let the Russian forces take a single piece of Ukrainian land. 

Image: AP