President Duda on Bucha massacre: criminals must be prosecuted and sentenced

Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday they were investigating possible crimes by Russian forces after finding hundreds of bodies strewn around towns including Bucha outside the capital Kyiv after the Russian withdrawal from the area.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba accused Russia on Sunday of carrying out a deliberate "massacre" in the town of Bucha outside Kyiv and called on the G7 to impose "devastating" new sanctions on Moscow. "We are still gathering and looking for bodies, but the number has already gone into the hundreds. Dead bodies lie on the streets. They killed civilians while staying there and when they were leaving these villages and towns," his ministry quoted him as saying on Twitter.

"Criminals must be called criminals, brought to justice and sentenced. Pictures from Bucha disprove the belief that we have to seek a compromise at any cost. In fact, the Defenders of Ukraine need three things above all: weapons, weapons and more weapons," Poland's President Andrzej Duda said on Twitter.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said on Monday many acts by Russian forces were classifiable as crimes against humanity and Ukraine was in this context investigating their actions in areas of the Kyiv region including Bucha. Speaking on national television, Venediktova said the situation in the town of Borodyanka was the worst in the Kyiv region in terms of the number of victims. She gave no further details.

Lavrov said the dead bodies were "staged" and that images of them and what he said was Ukraine's false version of events had been spread on social media by Western countries and Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine's version of what happened in the town of Bucha was a "fake attack" aimed at undermining Moscow, the TASS news agency reported.