April 6 (Reuters) – Artillery pounded key cities in Ukraine on Wednesday, as its president urged the West to act decisively in imposing new and tougher sanctions being readied against Russia in response to civilian killings widely condemned as war crimes.
BUCHA DEATHS
* The Ukrainian human rights ombudswoman said between 150 and 300 bodies may be in a mass grave by a church in the northern town of Bucha, where Ukraine accuses Russian troops of killing civilians.
* Russia called the evidence out of Bucha a “monstrous forgery”.
*The sight of tied bodies shot at close range in the Ukrainian streets of Bucha do not “look far short of genocide,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday.”When you look at what’s happening in Bucha, the revelations that we are seeing from what (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has done in Ukraine, which doesn’t look far short of genocide to me, it is no wonder that people are responding in the way that they are,” he told reporters.
⚡️Pope Francis condemns massacre of Bucha, calls UN impotent.
At his audience, the Pope called the cruelties against civilians in Ukraine horrendous. He added that the world is witnessing "the impotence of the International Organizations of the United Nation.”
* European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said there were more EU sanctions to come. “These sanctions (announced on Tuesday) will not be our last,” she said. “Now we have to look into oil and revenues Russia gets from fossil fuels.”
*Britain launched a review of steel tariff quotas for imports from Russia and Belarus on Wednesday to address the risk of a shortage of steel into the UK as a result of sanctions against the two countries over the invasion of Ukraine.”Reallocating quotas should help keep steel prices down for construction and other domestic industries,” Trade Remedies Authority head Oliver Griffiths said in a statement.
We want to isolate #Russia, bring the international community together, and avoid a divided world.
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) April 6, 2022
FIGHTING
* Heavy fighting and Russian air strikes continue in the encircled Ukrainian city of Mariupol, British military intelligence said.
* Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said authorities would try to evacuate trapped civilians through 11 humanitarian corridors, though people trying to leave the besieged Mariupol would have to use their own vehicles.
*Russian forces have taken control of 60% of the town of Rubizhne in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, which has suffered heavy shelling across its territory for the past 24 hours, Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gaidai said on Wednesday.
Don‘t tire of speaking out against the war. The Russian invasion troops don‘t tire of waging their war.
*Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday said foreign allies must impose maximum sanctions on Russia and provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needs in order to prevent the war spreading to other countries.”The only way to avert Russian war expanding beyond Ukraine is to provide us with the fullest support. Maximum sanctions. All the weapons. The policy of ‘not provoking (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’ has failed badly in past years,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
QUOTES
* “When we are hearing new rhetoric about sanctions… I can’t tolerate any (Western) indecisiveness after everything that Russian troops have done,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
“Recent news from the war in Ukraine, instead of bringing relief and hope, brought new atrocities, such as the massacre of Bucha,” Pope Francis said. “Stop this war! Let the weapons fall silent. Stop sowing death and destruction.”
The monument of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko on the central square in the city of Borodyanka near Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine. EPA-EFE/OLEG PETRASYUK
