The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over the killings of civilians in Ukraine's Bucha. As many as 93 countries voted in favour of the US push while 24 voted against it and 58 countries abstained from voting.
Meanwhile, the US and Britain announced new sanctions against Russia after Ukraine said hundreds of civilians were found dead near Kyiv, including the town of Bucha, after the pullout of Russian troops. The measures taken by US target Russia's top banks and two daughters of President Vladimir Putin, while Britain sanctioned two banks -- and vowed to eliminate all Russian oil and gas imports by year-end.
"They burned families. Families. Yesterday we found again a new family: father, mother, two children. Little, little children, two. One was a little hand, you know," Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
US President Joe Biden also joined in describing the horrors in Bucha.
"Civilians executed in cold blood, bodies dumped into mass graves, the sense of brutality and inhumanity left for all the world to see, unapologetically," Biden said.
The Kremlin denies responsibility and has claimed Kyiv staged civilian deaths -- with Putin on Wednesday accusing Ukrainian authorities of "crude and cynical provocations" in Bucha.
The Russian withdrawal from areas around Kyiv and the north is part of a shift towards Ukraine's southeast, in a bid to create a land bridge between occupied Crimea and Moscow-backed separatist statelets in the Donbas region.
