“We are citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. It is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities,” stressed the president, a day after horrific images of civilian deaths were released in Bucha, a Ukrainian city recovered from the Russian forces.
Three days after the invasion began on February 24, Ukraine filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice in The Hague accusing Russia of “planning acts of genocide.”
The interview will be broadcast on Sunday, a day after crude images of civilian bodies strewn in the streets of the city of Bucha, near kyiv, were released.
Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk said 280 bodies had been buried in mass graves in the city.
“We are citizens of Ukraine and we do not want to submit to the policy of the Russian Federation. This is why we are being destroyed and exterminated,” Zelensky said, according to the CBS transcript.
“And this is happening in 21st century Europe. So this is the torture of an entire nation,” he added.
The images and reports of the civilian deaths in Bucha generated condemnation at the international level and threats of more sanctions against Moscow.
This Sunday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg described the killings of Ukrainian civilians as “horrible” and “unacceptable” acts, while the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, described them as “a punch in the stomach” .
With information from AFP.