Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday he hoped Russian leader Vladimir Putin would spend the rest of his life in a dark basement with a bucket.
Zelensky spoke in the village of Yagidne, north of Kyiv, where he and German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck travelled to mark the one-year anniversary of the liberation of the settlement from Russian troops.
Soon after the invasion, the Russians forced 367 people — nearly the entire population of Yagidne — into a school basement measuring 200 square metres.
The villagers, including a six-week-old baby, were kept there for almost a month, and 11 of them died.
“After seeing all this, I hope the president of Russia will spend the rest of his days in a basement with a bucket for a toilet,” the Ukrainian leader said.
Zelensky said the villagers who were held in the basement for 27 days recorded the names of those who died “so as not to forget them”.
“And children wrote lines of the Ukrainian anthem,” he added.
One of the survivors said some people died from lack of oxygen in the small cellar.
“At first it was cold here, but then there were more people and there was not enough oxygen,” 38-year-old Valeriy Polgui told AFP.
“The elderly people lost consciousness from lack of oxygen, lost their mind and then died,” he said.
Kyiv authorities and Western governments have accused Russian forces of committing numerous war crimes in Ukraine. Moscow denies the claims.
