WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Russia waged a deliberate campaign to commit atrocities in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, and the United States is supporting the efforts of the Ukrainian authorities in their investigation of these acts, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.
“What we’ve seen in Bucha is not the random act of a rogue unit,” Blinken told reporters before departing for Brussels for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting.
“It’s a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities,” he said.
Russia, which says it launched a “special military operation” in Ukraine on Feb. 24 to demilitarize and “denazify” its neighbour, denies targeting civilians and said the deaths were a “monstrous forgery” staged by the West to discredit it.
(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, writing by Chris Gallagher; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
