‘THEY NEED ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING’ — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the U.N. Security Council today that Russian soldiers have tortured and shot Ukrainian civilians in the head. Other civilians have been killed by grenades thrown into their apartment or crushed to death by tanks while in their cars, Zelenskyy said. Mothers have been raped and killed in front of their children. International Committee of the Red Cross workers were in Bucha today, where Alyona Synenko, a spokesperson for the ICRC, talked to residents who choked up with tears when they recounted what they’d seen in recent days, she said in an interview with Nightly. Synenko saw unexploded bombs in the streets. Reports of atrocities in Bucha this week outraged the globe, prompting President Joe Biden to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be put on trial for war crimes. Humanitarian groups have been calling for safe passage for evacuation and aid deliveries in Ukraine for over a month now — a request that has yet to be met by both parties on the ground. Ukrainians seeing the brutality unfold in their cities are “extremely traumatized,” Synenko said. In Bucha, residents were cooking the little food they have over a fire outside because they no longer have gas in their apartments. As alleged atrocities surface and the fighting continues, particularly in the southeast region of the country, some Ukrainians who originally stayed put are now attempting to flee, heading west for safety, UNICEF spokesperson Toby Fricker told Nightly today. “Now you see extremely vulnerable people coming out of areas of heavy fighting,” Fricker said. “Children, very traumatized, and mothers who had been essentially stuck in those areas and who are still trying to get out.” Families are facing huge risks as they leave their homes behind. There’s a 4-year-old boy receiving care in an intensive care unit in Zaporizhzhya this week, Fricker said. The boy’s family packed nine people into a car to leave a village about an hour away when bullets struck the car and hit the child. There was a mass exodus at the beginning of the crisis, Fricker said, but now it’s a slower trickle of people trying to leave their homes in cities like Mariupol, Kherson and surrounding villages in southeast Ukraine. More than 10 million Ukrainians, roughly 25 percent of the population, have fled their homes, according to the United Nations. The port city of Mariupol is a key priority for the ICRC, whose workers are trying to evacuate Ukrainians who want to flee, Synenko said. Ukraine has accused Russian forces of shelling the safe routes, a claim Moscow has denied. Aid groups have had more success in places around Kyiv, where the fighting has died down. Left behind in these cities are largely the elderly, the homeless and people with disabilities. In Irpin, a city northwest of Kyiv, Synenko said a homeless man had been lying in the streets without food or water for days, with advanced gangrene on both of his legs. “They need absolutely everything,” Synenko said. “They need the most basic things. They need water. They’re asking for bread. They’re asking for a little bit of electricity, like a generator, to be able to charge their phone.” The ICRC and other aid groups aren’t involved in political negotiations between the Russians and Ukrainians to end the war, Synenko said. They’re focused on negotiating with both parties to guarantee safe passage for evacuees and aid groups delivering supplies. “It is much more difficult obviously to access the areas where there’s still fighting,” Synenko said. “We need agreements. We need for both sides to agree, to provide us the humanitarian access that we need. And those must not just be declarations — they need to be very precise, concrete agreements about the date, the hour, the road to use.” An ICRC team will travel to Chernihiv on Wednesday, about 90 miles north of Kyiv, where water and electricity are mainly cut off and civilians have been without aid. Weeks of a Russian siege have left the city in ruins, and hundreds have been buried in makeshift graves. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at mward@politico.com, or on Twitter at @MyahWard.
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