Diplomatic solutions to the war in Ukraine are getting more and more unlikely. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on Tuesday and admitted that the planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin “might not happen.”
It was projected that this meeting would continue the discussion on negotiations to end the war. But now Zelensky has visited Bucha and has accused Putin of genocide because of what he witnessed.
The president of Ukraine gave these somber words while speaking in a video broadcast on Ukrainian television.
He said, “And in this meeting, we could find the way out of this situation, without losing our territory. I think that this is the bar we have to set for these negotiations. And then we will see. It might happen that there will be no negotiations. It might happen.”
Certainly, this comes with a great deal of emotion for Zelensky. He recently returned from seeing the suburb of Kyiv called Bucha on Monday. The Ukrainian president was seen weeping over the number of bodies he witnessed as well as the mass graves that have been dug in the community.
“I’ve visited our cities in the Kyiv region, which we liberated from the occupiers: Stoyanka, Irpin, Bucha. Of course, now this area does not look like yesterday. The bodies of killed people killed Ukrainians have already been taken from most streets. But in the yards, in the houses, the dead still remain,” President Zelensky declared.
The president was clear that there would be an investigation of the evidence of genocide against both Putin and his armed forces. He noted that they have already begun the investigation into what has been done by Russian troops. According to Zelensky, they have tortured and killed more than three hundred people in Bucha. That is just one community. When the whole city gets searched, there will likely be many more.
Zelensky, a Jewish man, made a comparison between what he witnessed in his country to what took place through the Germans during the Holocaust. He said that Russian troops did things in Chernihiv, Kyiv, and Sumy regions that the people of Ukraine had not seen even in the Nazi population 80 years ago. Zelensky said that “the occupiers” will certainly bear responsibility for their actions, and that Russia will be the nation to suffer if their leaders will not pursue negotiations for peace. In fact, Zelensky said that if Russia’s leaders do not begin to really negotiate for peace, the country of Russia will experience the worst conditions they have faced in 50 years. He said that what is known in Russia as the “wicked 90’s” will seem “prosperous and calm.”
At the end of President Zelensky’s address, he announced the awards of 152 of the country’s military members as Ukrainian heroes. Three of the awards were given posthumously.
Zelensky’s challenge regarding the Russian genocide was backed up by President Joe Biden. He also called for Putin to be tried for war crimes after the reports were made known of Russia’s actions in Bucha. Biden said that he had been criticized for calling Putin a war criminal, but that now people were seeing what he has been capable of in Bucha. Biden said his actions certainly warrant the description of “war criminal.”
The president also vowed to keep providing Ukraine with the weapons they need to keep fighting. And he also promised to gather all the information necessary to have a war-crime trial.
Biden finished his remarks by saying that Putin was “brutal” and that what happened in Bucha was “outrageous.” He said that now everyone has seen it.
Diplomatic solutions don’t seem to be the answer to such aggression from Putin.
