President Zelensky will address the UN Security Council on Tuesday on the “Boutcha massacre”

This is a first in almost six weeks of conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will speak on Tuesday at a meeting of the UN Security Council on Ukraine, dominated by “the Boutcha massacre”, the British diplomatic mission which presides in Ukraine announced on Twitter on Monday. April this United Nations body.

When asked, the mission was unable to say at this stage whether this intervention by video link, unheard of at a UN meeting in New York since the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, would be live. or recorded in advance. Tuesday’s session of the Security Council was planned for a long time with the participation of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.

“War crimes”

On Monday, Volodymyr Zelensky, wearing a khaki coat and camouflage body armor, spent half an hour in Boutcha, near kyiv, where he accused Russian forces of committing ‘war crimes’ which will be recognized as genocide.

Russia, whose troops have recently left this locality, denied any involvement in the discovery of corpses in the streets which provoked strong condemnation in the world.

“The UK Presidency of the Council will ensure that the truth is heard about Russia’s war crimes. We will expose Putin’s war for what it really is,” the British mission added on its Twitter account.

The Russian version undermined by satellite photos

Moscow for its part denied having killed civilians in Boutcha, the Kremlin and the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov evoking “falsifications” and Ukrainian staging. During a press conference at the UN, the Russian ambassador Vassili Nebenzia assured that there were no corpses of civilians in the streets until the departure of the Russian troops on March 30.

But by analyzing side-by-side a video filmed on April 2 and Maxar satellite images from March 11, the New York Times notes that 11 corpses were already lying in the same places on Yablonska Street three weeks ago, when Russia controlled Boutcha. The bodies are just pixelated dark specks that cannot be identified with certainty, but their position relative to landmarks, like abandoned cars in the street, leaves little doubt.

The discovery of dozens of corpses of civilians sparked widespread outrage abroad and the promise of new sanctions. US President Joe Biden has even called for a “war crimes trial” against Vladimir Putin.