What you need to know right now By Reuters

(Reuters) – Global outrage spread over civilian killings near Kyiv including evidence of bound bodies shot at close range and a mass grave found in areas retaken from Russian troops.

WAR CRIMES INVESTIGATION?

* US President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal on Monday and said he would call for a war crimes trial.

* Ukraine said 50 of some 300 bodies found in Bucha northwest of Kyiv city were victims of extra-judicial killings by Russian troops. Reuters could not verify the report.

* Satellite images showed a 45-foot (14-m) -long trench dug into the grounds of a church where a mass grave was found.

* Ukraine called for an International Criminal Court investigation that France and Britain said they would support, and rights group Human Rights Watch said it had documented “apparent war crimes”.

* The Kremlin said it categorically denied any accusations related to the murder of civilians in the town and that the graves and corpses had been staged by Ukraine to tarnish Russia.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia’s mission to the United Nations would hold a news conference in New York with “the most detailed material to show the true nature of incidents in Bucha”.

FIGHTING

* Officials in Ukraine’s northern regions said Russian troops there had fully withdrawn or significantly reduced in number, leaving mines and damaged military vehicles behind.

* Russia has repositioned about two-thirds of its forces from around Kyiv, with many of them consolidating in Belarus, a senior US defense official said.

* Ukraine’s defense ministry said Russia was preparing to launch a fresh assault in the east to try to take the city of Kharkiv and encircle the heavily fortified eastern frontline.

* Explosions were heard in the cities of Kherson and Odessa, in the south and sounded across Ukraine’s east.

* Heavy fighting has continued in Mariupol as Russian forces attempt to take the southeastern port city, British military intelligence said.

ECONOMY

* Ukraine demanded crippling new sanctions from major Western powers over what it called the Bucha “massacre”.

* Russia maintained gas flows through key pipeline routes into Europe on Monday, despite uncertainty over payment terms and as the EU said it would “significantly tighten” further sanctions against Moscow

* French President Emmanuel Macron said new sanctions were needed, including on oil and coal, and that there were “very clear clues pointing to war crimes” by Russian forces in Bucha.

PEACE TALKS

* Russia said it had requested a UN Security Council meeting on Monday because of what Moscow called Kyiv’s attempts to disrupt peace talks and escalate violence with a “provocation” in Bucha.

* Britain’s mission to the UN said that request had been denied and that the Council would discuss Ukraine on Tuesday.

QUOTAS

* “This guy is brutal. And what’s happening in Bucha is outrageous, and everyone’s seen it,” Biden said. * “What is more opposite to music? The silence of ruined cities and killed people,” Zelenskiy said in a Grammy Awards video .

* “I recognized him by his sneakers, his trousers. He looked mutilated, his body was cold,” said Tetyana Volodymyrivna, a resident of Bucha, describing her husband.