Atrocities prompt calls to isolate Russia

Images of dead Ukrainians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, some with their hands
tied and others haphazardly buried in pits, spurred shocked Western leaders
yesterday to promise even tougher sanctions against Russia, including possibly
on energy. The Kremlin dug in and showed signs of preparing
a new assault. Follow the latest updates.

President Biden called for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to face a “war
crime trial.” Germany and France expelled a total of 75 Russian diplomats, and
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said the E.U. should consider
sanctions against Russian coal and oil.

A spokesman for Putin said that the Kremlin “categorically” denied “any
allegations” of Russian involvement in the atrocities, which Russian state
media denounced as a Western fabrication. The authorities threatened to
prosecute anyone who publicly blamed Russians for the Bucha killings.

A review of satellite images by The Times shows that many of the civilians were
killed more than three weeks ago, when Russia’s military controlled the town.
There were bodies in the streets as early as March 11, well before Russia says it
“withdrew completely” from Bucha.

What’s next: Ukrainian and Western officials said that Russia appeared to be
positioning troops for an intensified assault in the eastern Donbas area. In
Kharkiv, roughly 30 miles from the border, unrelenting bombardment has left
parts of the city of 1.4 million unrecognizable. The systematic destruction is
part of a broader strategy to seize the country’s east.

In other news from the war:

• Europe, recoiling from Russian suppliers, wants 50 billion cubic meters

of additional natural gas. Rising demand may create a tug of war with
other countries.

• The Communist Party in China is mounting an ideological campaign to

build domestic sympathy for Russia.

• Russia continued to bombard the key southern cities of Mykolaiv and

Mariupol, and a desperately needed Red Cross convoy was again unable
 to reach Mariupol. The city’s mayor said at least 130,000 people were
trapped there.

Oil fields near Basra, Iraq.Hussein Faleh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A climate change report urges action

To successfully limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees
Fahrenheit, countries must drastically accelerate efforts to slash their emissions
from coal, oil and natural gas, according to a major new report from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Here are five takeaways from the
report.

Nations would need to collectively reduce their planet-warming emissions

roughly 43 percent by 2030 and to stop adding carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s, the report found. Current policies
by governments are expected to reduce global emissions by only a few
percentage points this decade.

Even if the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees becomes unattainable,

scientists said, it will still be worthwhile for countries to cut emissions as
quickly as possible. Global warming will largely halt once humans stop adding
heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere, a concept known as “net zero”
emissions, experts say.

Details: A rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius is widely considered to be the threshold

beyond which the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods,
droughts, wildfires and ecosystem collapse — grow considerably. People have
already heated the planet by an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the 19th
century.

Glimmers of optimism: Over the past decade, many nations have adopted
ambitious climate policies. Although emissions are still growing worldwide, the
rate of growth slowed in the 2010s, compared with the 2000s, the report said.
Humanity now has a much better shot at avoiding some of the worst-case
scenarios once feared by scientists.