Will the Bucha Massacre Lead to More Russia Sanctions?

Welcome to today’s Foreign Policy brief, where we’re following Russian atrocities in Bucha, Pakistan’s political crisis, and Sri Lanka’s mass protests.

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When Ukrainian forces retook the Kyiv suburb of Bucha this past weekend, they found a town decimated by a brutal massacre. 

With reports of hundreds of people buried in mass graves and bodies lining the streets, accounts from Bucha have exposed the horror of Moscow’s invasion—and added to mounting evidence that Russian forces have been indiscriminately killing civilians. Witnesses report Russian troops using local children as human shields for their tanks, while others recall soldiers shooting fleeing civilians. 

“These are war crimes and will be recognized by the world as genocide,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday. “We know of thousands of people killed and tortured, with severed limbs, raped women, and murdered children.”

As new accounts come to light, human rights groups fear that the destruction wrought in Bucha may only be a fraction of what is unfolding elsewhere, my colleagues Amy Mackinnon and Mary Yang report. Without access to Russian-held territory, researchers must rely on individual testimony and photographic evidence to piece their reports together. The witness accounts from Bucha, Mackinnon and Yang write, are likely just the beginning.

“I think we’re going to expect to see the same picture on the entire territory, from Kyiv to Mariupol and Kherson,” Anatoliy Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, said in an interview with CNN. 

Human Rights Watch, a leading human rights group, has already documented several instances of apparent war crimes across Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine, including cases of summary executions, repeated rape, and other sexual violence. 

“The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians,” Hugh Williamson, Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement. “Rape, murder, and other violent acts against people in the Russian forces’ custody should be investigated as war crimes.”

As evidence of Russian atrocities grows, so too are calls for a forceful global response. Kyiv has urged the International Criminal Court to visit the city to collect evidence of war crimes, while U.S. President Joe Biden condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “war criminal” and called for a trial. Germany, France, and Lithuania have announced plans to expel Russian diplomats from their countries. 

Accounts from Bucha are now also pushing European countries to reconsider an economic response that many have long resisted: targeting Russia’s energy sector. Many European countries, especially Germany, are deeply dependent on Russia for their energy supply, and deciding to sanction the sector could mark a significant turn in how far they are willing to go to hold Putin accountable.

On Monday, in a move that increases pressure on the Kremlin and could lead to default, the U.S. Treasury banned Russia from accessing U.S.-held reserves to pay holders of its sovereign debt, Reuters reports.

“It is very clear that there are indications of war crimes,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “What happened in Bucha dictates a new package of sanctions.” 

Pakistan’s constitutional crisis. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan plunged the country into a political crisis on Sunday after he dissolved parliament and called for early elections, in an effort to thwart a no-confidence vote that was widely expected to oust him from power.

Perhaps to garner more support, Khan has claimed that his opponents and the United States were attempting to interfere in the country’s politics, an accusation that Washington has denied. “I ask people to prepare for the next elections,” Khan said on Sunday. “Thank God, a conspiracy to topple the government has failed.”

Opposition leaders are now challenging Khan’s actions before the country’s Supreme Court, while arguing that his moves constitute an “open coup against the country and the constitution.”

Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown. Several members of Sri Lanka’s cabinet resigned on Sunday after thousands of people demonstrated against crushing food and fuel shortages and demanded President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation. Sri Lanka has been in the throes of its most severe economic crisis in decades, largely driven by the government’s considerable debt, blows to the tourism sector, and a failed national organic farming experiment.

Writing in Foreign Policy in March, Ted Nordhaus and Saloni Shah explained how Sri Lanka’s organic farming push went catastrophically wrong and helped catalyze this economic crisis. 

Climate action. According to a new report by the United Nations-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world is currently on a path to speed past critical climate targets, even if countries’ existing pledges are met. But the report outlines immediate, collective actions that would help the world correct course—including investing seriously in climate mitigation, focusing on renewable energy, and reconfiguring cities and transportation systems. 

“Some government and business leaders are saying one thing—but doing another,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said. “Simply put, they are lying. And the results will be catastrophic.”

Turkey’s record inflation. Turkey’s inflation rate climbed to 61 percent in March—its highest level in 20 years—as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drives up global energy and food prices, further compounding the country’s existing economic woes during the COVID-19 pandemic. The country is experiencing an “extraordinary period,” Turkish Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said. 

More than 10 million Ukrainians, roughly a quarter of the population, have fled their homes since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. How will this humanitarian crisis shape the future of Europe? What can be done to help Ukrainian refugees? How has racism played a role in the recent crisis? Join FP’s editor in chief, Ravi Agrawal, for a live discussion with David Miliband, the president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, as they discuss the humanitarian consequences of the war in Ukraine.

German authorities are investigating a 60-year-old German man who received 90 COVID-19 shots so that he could sell fake vaccination cards with official batch numbers. After he went to the same vaccination center two days in a row, police caught him and found him carrying blank vaccination cards. It’s unclear how receiving 90 doses—many of which were from different manufacturers—has impacted his health.