China's UN envoy calls violence in Bucha 'deeply disturbing'

Ambassador Zhang Jun called on all sides to exercise restraint. PHOTO: REUTERS

BEIJING (BLOOMBERG) - China's envoy to the United Nations expressed dismay at the killing of unarmed civilians in Bucha, while calling on all sides to refrain judgment until a probe establishes who is responsible.

"Attacks against civilians are unacceptable and should not occur," Ambassador Zhang Jun said on Tuesday (April 5) at a UN Security Council briefing on Ukraine. "The reports and images of civilian deaths in Bucha are deeply disturbing."

Still, Mr Zhang stopped short of condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin for the violence, saying that "circumstances and specific causes of the incident should be verified and established" and "all sides should exercise restraint and avoid unfounded accusations".

President Joe Biden has said Mr Putin could face a war crimes trial related to the civilian deaths in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, and other Ukrainian towns vacated by Russian soldiers.

While the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation, Russia has denied that its forces killed civilians, saying pictures of bodies strewn on the streets were a fabrication by Ukraine.

China has come under increased pressure from Washington and Brussels to take a clear stance on the conflict, as its diplomats and state media play down civilian casualties and cast Mr Putin as a victim of a US-backed eastward expansion of Nato.

European leaders told Mr Xi in a Friday video call that "equidistance is not enough", European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after the tense meeting, adding her side made clear that "active engagement for peace is important".

Chinese state media outlets including the overseas edition of Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, China Central Television's military affairs channel and China Daily posted Mr Zhang's remarks on Wednesday to China's Twitter-like Weibo.

The posts attracted little attention compared with items on the Covid-19 outbreak in Shanghai and unverified footage of Ukrainian marines surrendering in Mariupol, which was briefly the second top trending item.

Before Mr Zhang’s remarks at the UN, state media had mostly amplified Russia’s denial that Putin’s army was involved in the killings.

On Monday, CCTV published Russian defence ministry claims that all photos and videos of Bucha were "directed by the Ukrainian government for Western media". 

That theory, dismissed as a falsehood by numerous governments, was widely circulated on Chinese social media, while posts showing how newspapers around the world were condemning Russia’s massacre on their front pages were censored.

The Communist Party backed Global Times tabloid referred to the mass killings as the "Bucha incident" in a Wednesday editorial, which called the US the "initiator" of the Ukraine crisis and blamed it for exacerbating tensions by sanctioning Russia.

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Still, some netizens were outraged by Russian’s atrocities, comparing them to the Nanjing massacre, which China says led to the killing of 300,000 civilians by an invading Japanese army for several weeks from late 1937 to early 1938.

Some Japanese nationalists have said the number of deaths cited by China are greatly exaggerated and deny that atrocities took place.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry said "the killing of noncombatants, looting and other acts occurred. However, there are numerous theories as to the actual number of victims". 

"As Chinese people who have the memories of the Nanjing massacre, those who can still defend massacre of civilians have utterly lost their conscience," said one Weibo user in a post shared nearly 900 times.

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