US Secretary Of State Assesses The Atrocities In Bucha Ukraine Not Random Action: Deliberate Campaign

Conditions in Bucha, Ukraine. (Wikimedia Commons/President.gov.ua)

JAKARTA - The killings in the Ukrainian city of Bucha were not random acts by a rogue unit, but part of a deliberate Russian campaign to perpetrate atrocities, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.

He provided no evidence to support his assertion of a deliberate campaign. However, before leaving for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, he told reporters that Washington supports Ukraine's efforts to investigate what happened.

"What we saw in Bucha was not a random act of a rogue unit," he said.

"This is a deliberate campaign to kill, torture, rape, commit atrocities. The report is more than credible, the evidence is there for the world to see," said Foreign Minister Blinken.

Russia, which says it launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24 to demilitarize and denazify its neighbor, denies targeting civilians, saying the deaths were gruesome fabrications carried out by the West to discredit it.

Gloomy images emerging from the city of Bucha near Kyiv, including mass graves and bound bodies of people, shot at close range, prompted calls for tougher action against Moscow and an international investigation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at least 300 civilians had died in Bucha, and many more were likely to be found in other areas.

Meanwhile, the administration of President Joe Biden said Russia's actions in Ukraine amounted to war crimes, with President Biden calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a war crime and calling for a trial, on Monday.