Pokrovsk (Ukraine): Russia's offensive in eastern Ukraine gathered momentum Thursday as the United Nations' chief surveyed the destruction in towns outside Kyiv that experienced some of the worst horrors of the first onslaught of the war.
U.N. Secretary-General Ant nio Guterres condemned the atrocities visited on towns like Bucha where evidence of mass killings of civilians was found after Russia's retreated from the area in the face of stiffer than expected Ukrainian resistance.
Forced to regroup after failing to take the capital, Russia switched its focus to the vital eastern industrial heartland, where fighting is now picking up pace. Ukraine's military said several areas in the Donbas have come under intense fire in the past day, and satellite images showed new damage from bombardments on the last known pocket of Ukrainian resistance in Mariupol.
Ukrainian authorities warned that civilians who are still in the southeastern port city face dangerously unsanitary conditions, while many of the dead from a two-month siege remain unburied.
"Wherever there is a war, the highest price is paid by civilians, said Guterres as he visited the bombed out Kyiv suburb of Irpin.
He sought to drive home the devastation, saying he imagined his own family having to flee from bombs falling on their home, and he reiterated how important it was that the war crimes alleged be investigated.
But when we talk about war crimes, we cannot forget that the worst of crimes is war itself, he added, in his stop in Bucha.
The revelation of mass killings around Kyiv helped to galvanize support for Ukraine in the West, which has slapped sanctions on Russia and sent arms to Ukraine. Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov vowed his country would join others in providing military assistance as he toured another scene of atrocities outside Kyiv, Borodyanka.
Bulgaria, under a new liberal government that took office last fall, has cut many of its old ties to Moscow and supported punitive measures against the Kremlin.