Moscow, Apr. 7, (dpa/GNA) - Moscow will not escape responsibility for the high number of Ukrainians killed in the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday night.
“We already know of thousands of missing people,” he said in an address on Telegram.
He said there were only two possibilities for what had happened to the missing people – either they were deported to Russia or killed.
Zelensky said Moscow had changed its tactics after the international outcry over images from the Kiev suburb of Bucha, where hundreds of civilian bodies were found after Russian troops withdrew.
Moscow is now trying to remove the bodies of those killed in areas occupied by Russian troops from streets and basements, but investigations, witnesses and satellite imagery will be used to determine the circumstances of the disappearances, he said.
Zelensky said Moscow is meanwhile continuing to build up combat power to realize its ambitions in the Donbass in Ukraine’s east, with Russian units preparing to resume offensives there.
The government in Kiev has called on people in Luhansk, Donetsk and Kharkiv to flee.
Zelensky said that until Russia begins to seriously seek peace, Ukraine will “fight and not retreat.”
GNA