US, UK up Russia sanctions as Kyiv warns of eastern attack
The US and Britain announced new sanctions against Russia Wednesday after Ukraine said hundreds of civilians were found dead around its capital, as Kyiv warned residents in the east of the country to get out "now" ahead of a feared assault.
The White House unveiled measures targeting Russia's top public and private banks and two daughters of President Vladimir Putin, while Britain sanctioned two banks -- and vowed to eliminate all Russian oil and gas imports by year-end.
Their actions followed an international outcry after Ukraine said its forces found hundreds of civilians dead around the capital Kyiv, including the town of Bucha, after Russian troops withdrew.
In a video address to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky showed harrowing images of corpses -- including of children -- that he said were victims of Russian atrocities.
The Kremlin denies responsibility and on Wednesday, Putin accused Ukrainian authorities of being behind "crude and cynical provocations" in Bucha, in a call with Hungary's prime minister, the Kremlin said.
The Russian withdrawal from areas around Kyiv and the north is part of a shift in focus towards Ukraine's southeast, in a bid to create a land bridge between occupied Crimea and Moscow-backed separatist statelets in the region of Donbas.
Ukraine Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk on Wednesday warned residents in the eastern Kharkiv, Lugansk and Donetsk regions to leave immediately due a feared Russian attack.
"It has to be done now because later people will be under fire and face the threat of death," she wrote on Telegram.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said there was no sign Putin had dropped "his ambition to control the whole of Ukraine".
"We have to be realistic and realise that this may last for a long time, for many months, for even years," he said ahead of a meeting with NATO foreign ministers.
Zelensky called for Russia's exclusion from the UN Security Council, where it is one of five members with veto power, and made an impassioned plea for action in response to the civilian killings.
"They cut off limbs... slashed their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children," he said, after earlier comparing Russia's assault to the 1937 Nazi bombing of the town of Guernica.
The US and Britain have also pressed to have Russia excluded from the UN Human Rights Council, with a vote in the General Assembly scheduled for Thursday.
At his weekly audience at the Vatican, Pope Francis deplored the "powerlessness of international organisations" before what he called "ever more horrendous cruelties", before kissing a flag brought from Bucha.
