Bucha killings ‘must never happen again’, says French FM in Ukraine

During a visit to Ukraine on Monday, France’s Ukraine new foreign minister, Catherine Colonna, blasted civilian fatalities outside of Kyiv as a show of solidarity as Russian forces push east.

“This should never have happened. It must never happen again,” Colonna told reporters after visiting an Orthodox church in the town of Bucha outside the capital Kyiv, where Russian forces have been accused of killing civilians.

She said France stood with victims of alleged Russian atrocities and that her country would “do everything in its power to restore peace”.

Hundreds of Ukrainians were killed during Russia’s occupation of the town in the early stages of Moscow’s invasion spurring allegations of war crimes by Kyiv and European capitals.

Colonna said during the visit to Bucha that France had been “the first one to respond”, referring to the dispatch of French gendarmes to Bucha to investigate potential war crimes alongside Ukrainian investigators.

The foreign minister added she hoped “legal proceedings are completed as quickly as possible, so that families can see their loved ones laid to rest in proper graves”.

Colonna is the highest-ranking French official to visit Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24.

She will meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and her counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, according to the French foreign ministry, to address Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports and its impact on world food security.