NUR-SULTAN -- The chairman of the Kazakh Senate, Maulen Ashimbaev, has called the mass killings of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha when it was under the control of occupying Russian troops "a tragedy that needs an international investigation."
"How and why it happened must, of course, be determined with the participation of international organizations, Western countries, other countries," Ashimbaev told reporters on April 7.
"This is what the Ukrainian people are waiting for, and what the world community is waiting for. At this point, it is important to stay away from emotional assessments and accusations. I am confident that a wide-scale and thorough UN-led investigation must be conducted to find what exactly happened in Bucha," he said.
Grisly images emerged this week of dead civilians in the streets of Bucha, a town northeast of Kyiv that was recaptured from Russian invaders. Local officials say more than 300 people were killed by Russian forces in Bucha alone and around 50 of them were executed. Some of the corpses had their hands tied behind their backs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called the killings "war crimes" and "genocide." Western countries have ramped up sanctions against Russia, which has denied the accusations, in reaction to the deaths.
Kazakhstan is a close ally of Russia, which provided troops to Kazakhstan through the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in January to help stabilize the situation when massive protests turned deadly.