Zelensky to the UN: Where is the Security Council? Where is the peace?

In the last few minutes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has begun an address to the United Nations Security Council.

In it, he described the atrocities he witnessed as he visited the town of Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv, where images of tied bodies shot at close range and mass graves were taken.

Russia has claimed, without evidence, that photos in Bucha were staged by Ukraine or are somehow a hoax. But an investigation by the New York Times uncovered satellite images that appear to show bodies lying in Bucha weeks ago, when the Russian military was in control of the town.

Such denials may work in authoritarian nations where leaders regularly demand that their subjugated citizens disregard what they see with their own eyes and where protest is a punishable offence. But to everyone else, they carry a cravenness that itself is scarcely believable.

Britain’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, called the images from Bucha “harrowing, appalling, probable evidence of war crimes and possibly a genocide”.

Zelensky warned that further evidence of mass atrocities inflicted on civilians by Russian forces will emerge as the Kremlin concentrates its forces in the east of Ukraine.

He also criticised the UN for failing to live up to its own charter, said the worst crimes since World War II were being committed and called for a Nuremberg-style tribunal. You can follow his speech here.

Elsewhere in the paper, campaigners have hailed the biggest shake-up of divorce law in half a century, as from Wednesday married couples in England and Wales will be able to enter into ‘no fault’ proceedings. There’s a handy Q&A here.

In the comment pages, Defence editor Robert Fox suggests that Vladimir Putin, who has set himself a tight deadline to declare victory in Ukraine by Russia’s traditional Victory day parade of May 9, could be impaled by his own manic delusion.

Meanwhile, Alex Jones, who survived fights, frights and delayed flights, concludes that hell is other people at Heathrow baggage hall.

And Homes & Property Editor Prudence Ivey says yes, millennials are buying fewer homes, but that we wouldn’t have to care if the alternatives were better.

Finally, your starter for 10: which London university has just won a record fourth University Challenge title?

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