Russia kicked off UN rights council over Ukraine abuses

"Russia's lies are no match for the undeniable evidence of what is happening in Ukraine," Biden said in a statement, as he hailed Moscow's expulsion from the rights council.

"The signs of people being raped, tortured, executed -- in some cases having their bodies desecrated -- are an outrage to our common humanity."

Moscow rejected its suspension, voted by the UN General Assembly, as "illegal and politically motivated."

With the Kremlin accused of targeting civilian areas, officials said they had recovered 26 more bodies from the rubble of two destroyed apartment buildings in Borodyanka, near Kyiv, where authorities were searching the ruins a week after Russian forces withdrew. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky warned the destruction in Borodianka was "much more horrific" than in nearby Bucha -- where Western nations accuse Moscow's forces of committing war crimes.

In Ukraine's east, desperate civilians were warned to take their "last chance" to flee -- with Russian forces believed to be preparing a massive assault after withdrawing from Kyiv and Ukraine's north.

A barrage of shells and rockets was already hammering the industrial hub Severodonetsk in the Donbas region, the easternmost city held by Ukrainian forces, leaving buildings engulfed in flames.

"Every day it's worse and worse," said Denis, a man in his forties with a pale, emaciated face. "They're raining down on us from everywhere. We cannot take it anymore." 

"I want to escape this hell," he says -- but the question of where to go will have to wait: "I will think about it where there are no more shells falling around me."

Denis fears Severodonetsk will see the same fate as the southern port of Mariupol, devastated by Russian forces in a weeks-long siege and where even pro-Russian authorities now acknowledge a staggering civilian toll.

On Thursday Mariupol's new mayor Konstantin Ivashchenko -- installed by the leader of the breakaway Donetsk region's separatists -- announced that around 5,000 civilians have been killed in the city. 

The toll corroborated the low end of earlier estimates by Ukrainian officials, who said the figure could be as high as 10,000.

Human rights groups say rape is also being used as a "weapon of war" in Ukraine.

Officials have alleged that Russian troops are now trying to cover up atrocities elsewhere to prevent further international outcry, including in Mariupol.

As emergency crews pulled new bodies from the rubble of two buildings in Borodyanka, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said "only the civilian population was targeted."

"There is no military site here," she said on Facebook, adding it was "impossible to predict" how many more dead there may be.