Bucha mass grave and the question of talks, 4 April 2022
A retrospective on the day Ukraine's president visited the site of a mass burial in Bucha, while talks and calls for war-crimes trials were debated.
What did the recovery of territory around Kyiv reveal, and how did leaders respond? On 4 April 2022, a mass grave in Bucha, a town near the capital, was at the centre of attention, and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, visited the site.
Police in the Kyiv region and local residents said they believed at least 150 people were buried there. The town's mayor said the number of dead could reach 300. The discovery followed the withdrawal of Russian forces from the area. On 2 April 2022, Ukraine's deputy defence minister, Hanna Malyar, had announced that 30 towns and settlements in northern Ukraine and around Kyiv had been returned to Ukrainian control. She said Irpin, Bucha, Hostomel and the whole Kyiv region had been liberated from the invader.
A battle that ended in withdrawal
The fighting for Bucha was part of the wider Kyiv offensive, in which Russian forces sought to encircle the capital. Background to the events describes the battle as running from 27 February to 31 March 2022 and ending with the Russian withdrawal.
Reactions on 4 April
As more images from Bucha emerged, the US president, Joe Biden, called for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to face trial for war crimes. Zelenskyy said that peace talks would continue despite the massacre in Bucha.
The day came just after Zelenskyy had addressed an international audience in another setting. On 3 April 2022, he appeared by video at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards with a pre-taped speech urging viewers to support Ukraine during the invasion in any way they could.
Elsewhere in Europe, the security debate was also moving. On 2 April 2022, the Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin, said a decision on whether Finland would join NATO had to be made before the summer, adding that Russia was not the neighbour Finland had thought it was.
Taken together, the reports of 4 April 2022 show a day on which the scale of the losses in Bucha, the call for accountability from Washington and Kyiv's decision to keep negotiating were all part of the same public conversation.
