United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has toured areas outside the Ukrainian capital that suffered damage during the Russian advance there, calling war “an absurdity.”
Speaking to journalists on Thursday at several points, Guterres urged Russia to cooperate with the International Criminal Court. That’s after the bodies of civilians were found in areas once held by Russian forces, some shot with their hands bound.
Guterres also said that “civilians always pay the highest price” in any war.
“When I see those destroyed buildings, I must say what I feel. I imagined my family in one of those houses that is now destroyed and black. I see my granddaughters running away in panic, part of the family eventually killed,” he said in Borodianka. “So, the war is an absurdity in the 21st century. The war is evil. And when one sees these situations our heart, of course, stays with the victims.”
He also added: “When we talk about war crimes, we cannot forget that the worst of crimes is war itself.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that if Western forces, which are supplying increasingly heavy weaponry to Kyiv, intervene in Ukraine, they will face a "lightning-fast" military response.
