Russia has called for a special UN Security Council meeting to address claims that its forces committed atrocities against Ukrainian civilians in Bucha.
On Sunday, Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's deputy ambassador to the UN, requested a meeting of the council “in the light of heinous provocation of Ukrainian radicals”, he said in a post on Twitter.
Ukraine and Western leaders have expressed outrage over the discovery of mass graves and hundreds of dead people in the small town north-west of Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky directly blamed Moscow for the “killings” of civilians.
Russia denied the accusations and said Kyiv staged footage of the corpses.
Senior Washington official Samantha Power, a former US ambassador to the UN, slammed Moscow's UN move and said it was designed to “feign outrage.”
“Russia is drawing from the playbook it used for Crimea and Aleppo,” Ms Power, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development, wrote on Twitter.
UN authorities have yet to publicly state whether a Security Council emergency meeting will take place on Monday.
On Monday and Tuesday, a delegation of Arab League foreign ministers will meet with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts to seek a diplomatic solution to the war.
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