Zelensky Emotionally Condemns Civilian Killings, Tells the Mothers of Russian Soldiers ‘See What Bastards You’ve Raised’

[WARNING: This post contains graphic images.]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admonished the mothers of Russian soldiers who were committing atrocities in his country in a post sharing photos of civilians killed in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, urging them to look at the evidence of the death that their sons as “murderers, looters, and butchers” had caused.

Zelensky has been fighting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on two fronts, the physical military battles and the online war of information, and he’s been leading the charge on the latter through a steady stream of photos and videos on his official Telegram channel and other social media, as well as television interviews with international media and video conferences with world governments.

The Ukrainian military successfully liberated the town of Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, from Russian troops, but as the Russians withdrew, they left horrors behind. Multiple media outlets and Ukrainian government officials reported photos and videos of civilians who had been slaughtered. Some of the dead can be seen in the photos with their hands tied behind their backs.

Zelensky has previously addressed some of his video messages to Russian mothers, calling on them to check on their sons, to not believe Russian propaganda that they were just engaging in non-combat “exercises,” and not send their sons to die in Ukraine.

“Do not send your children to war in a foreign land,” he implored in a March 11 video. “Do not give your son to death or captivity.”

This time, however, he was no longer urging the Russian mothers to help protect their sons’ lives, but condemning the war crimes they had committed. In a Telegram post on Sunday, Zelensky shared some additional photos from Bucha, with the caption identifying them as being taken by photographers Vadim Gird and Ronaldo Schemidt with UNIAN, the Ukrainian Independent Information Agency.

“Mothers of Russian soldiers should see that,” wrote Zelensky. “See what bastards you’ve raised. Murderers, looters, butchers.”

CNN correspondents in Bucha confirmed the reports of mass graves, as well as the dead civilians. Frederik Pleitgen, CNN senior international correspondent, reported that Bucha was “completely destroyed” and that he had seen several of the mass grave sites as he walked around the town with the Ukrainian national police. Pleitgen also described seeing a dead man’s body lying in a residential backyard, with his hands tied behind his back, his feet tied together, “severe bruises on his legs,” and a shell casing next to his head. “Obviously showing that person had been essentially executed,” said Pleitgen.

CNN also aired a clip from an interview Zelenksy had earlier Sunday on Face the Nation, in which he denounced the Russian soldiers for not just killing the civilians in Bucha, but torturing them as well. “Indeed, this is genocide,” said Zelensky.

Some things that they have done, when we find people with hands tied behind their back and decapitated, such things I don’t understand. I don’t comprehend. The kids who were killed and tortured. So it wasn’t enough just to kill for those criminals. Maybe they wanted to take gold or washing machines and they were killing, but they were also torturing them as they did this. Indeed, this is genocide.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

UPDATE 4:30 pm ET: Zelensky followed up his photo post with a Telegram video message in which he again addressed the topic of the “tortured, executed civilians” in Bucha, and asked pointed questions of the mothers of the soldiers who were responsible.

Zelensky harshly condemned the Russian soldiers who had tortured and killed so many civilians, pointing out that they had left many mines behind in civilian areas, even going so far as to mine the dead bodies. These soldiers “deserve only death after what they did.”

“What did they do? Why were they killed? What did the man who was riding his bicycle down the street do?” Zelensky asked, referring the body of one man that had been photographed where he collapsed in the road with his bicycle. “Why were women strangled after their earrings were ripped out of their ears? How could women be raped and killed in front of children?”

“What did the Ukrainian city of Bucha do to your Russia?” the Ukrainian president continued.

“Russian mothers! Even if you raised looters, how did they also become butchers? You couldn’t be unaware of what’s inside your children. You couldn’t overlook that they are deprived of everything human. No soul. No heart. They killed deliberately and with pleasure.”

This post has been updated with additional information.