Biden calls for Putin to face war crimes trial over civilian killings in Ukraine

Joe Biden has called for Vladimir Putin to be tried for war crimes as western leaders prepared a fresh round of economic sanctions against Moscow amid mounting global outrage over claims of civilian killings by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.

The US president was responding to harrowing images broadcast around the world after the discovery over the weekend of a mass grave and bodies in civilian clothes, some with their hands bound, in the town of Bucha, near Kyiv.

In nearby Motyzhyn, an adviser to the Ukrainian interior ministry, Anton Herashchenko, showed the partially covered bodies of the village head, her husband and their son to reporters. They had been shot and buried in a shallow grave, he said.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU was sending investigators to Ukraine to help local authorities document war crimes.