Bennett stops short of criticising Russia for Ukraine killings

Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett described him as shocked by the gruesome images emerging from Bucha in Ukraine, but did not explicitly say Russia could be responsible.

In his first public remarks since Russian troops were accused of war crimes in regions surrounding the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Bennett said the scenes were “terrible”.

He added: “we condemn them, unequivocally. The foreign minister [Yair Lapid] already referred to it, awful scenes. The suffering of Ukrainian citizens is immense, and we’re doing everything we can to assist.”

He made the remarks during a visit to a West Bank military base.

But Israeli media noted the prime minister pointedly did not discuss who might have been responsible.

There have been growing calls in Western countries for tougher sanctions on Russia and for senior Russian leaders, including President Vladimir Putin, to be tried on war crimes charges.

The images from Bucha, a town to the northwest of Kyiv, showed dozens of corpses lying on streets dressed in civilian clothes and apparently unarmed.

Members of Israel’s Labor Party, a junior partner in the governing coalition, called on Israel to join international sanctions in response to the apparent massacres.

Russia has rejected all allegations of atrocities and claimed the pictures were faked.

However, it did not present evidence and satellite footage obtained by the New York Times suggested the corpses had been in place for several days before Russia’s withdrawal from the area.