BEIJING (AP) — China has described reports and images of civilian killings in Ukraine as disturbing, and urged that they be further investigated, even while declining to blame Russia. That’s drawn questions about the resiliency of Beijing’s support for Moscow, but speculation that it is weakening appears to be misplaced.

Here’s a deeper look at where China stands at this stage of the conflict:

IS CHINA SERIOUS ABOUT PROBING ATROCITIES?

In his statement Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian referred to reports of atrocities in the town of Bucha, saying, “The truth and the cause of the incident must be verified.” He said that all parties should exercise restraint and avoid “unfounded accusations before a conclusion of the investigation.”

Crucially, Zhao did not mention Russian forces and gave no indication of how evidence should be gathered or by whom.

China has a lengthy history of providing political cover for its friends after incidents such as the sinking of a South Korean navy ship in 2010. China called that “unfortunate,” but refused to accept evidence North Korea was responsible.

Beijing also routinely turns accusations of war crimes back on the accusers, mainly the U.S., citing the Iraq invasion and incidents such as NATO’s 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. China has never accepted NATO’s claim that the attack was unintended.

WHERE DOES CHINA STAND ON RUSSIA’S INVASION?

Beijing early on committed itself to the position that Russia was provoked into attacking its neighbor by the eastward expansion of NATO under U.S. direction, even though Russian President Vladimir Putin has not listed that as his primary motive for invading.

China has abstained in votes at the United Nations condemning Russia’s actions, and, in keeping with standard policy, has strongly opposed economic sanctions against Russia.

At the same time, China shows no signs of undermining those sanctions or rushing in to fill the void left by the departure of Western companies from Russia.

Beijing has of late focused its messages on calls for talks leading to a cease-fire and avoiding a major humanitarian catastrophe. It has also provided Ukraine with humanitarian assistance and kept a line open to Ukrainian officials. Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his counterpart Dmytro Kuleba on Monday that China does not “have the mentality of watching the fire from a safe distance, still less to do anything that adds fuel to the fire.”

WHAT’S BEHIND CHINA’S SUPPORT FOR RUSSIA?

China and Russia have grown increasingly close under Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, aligning their foreign policies in opposition to the Western liberal world order.

China generally follows Russia’s lead in voting at the U.N. and has helped stymy efforts to censure it over its military intervention in Syria. Together, the countries account for two of the five permanent veto-wielding seats on the U.N. Security Council, forming a bloc that can effectively frustrate Washington’s initiatives.

The two are also closely linked economically, with China becoming Russia’s largest trading partner and an important export market for its natural gas and oil.

Just weeks before the war began, Xi and Putin met in Beijing and issued a joint statement describing their relations as having “no limits.” To criticize Putin would therefore implicitly criticize Xi, something China does not tolerate.

WHAT ARE THE RISKS AND POTENTIAL BENEFITS?

By claiming to be an impartial observer, China has won Moscow’s gratitude while largely shielding itself from obligations to take action against Russia. Beijing also points to the refusal of other countries including India and Brazil to condemn Moscow as evidence it doesn’t stand alone.

Beijing has no desire to see the end of Putin’s regime, but could benefit from a weakened Russia becoming even more of a junior partner in the relationship. That could give Beijing a stronger hand in obtaining Russian energy resources and cutting edge military technology.

At present, the risks are minimal. Beijing is long accustomed to being accused of enabling or perpetrating human rights abuses and has grown adept at ignoring or parrying them using its economic and political clout.

While its biggest city Shanghai is facing one of the country’s largest outbreak since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with a key Communist Party congress coming up later in the year, China is on high alert for anything that might threaten domestic stability.

HOW IS CHINA KEEPING THE PUBLIC ON ITS SIDE?

Beijing’s entirely Communist Party-controlled media have reported on the civilian killings in Bucha, but their coverage has a strong pro-Russian slant. The media have also amplified Russian disinformation, especially debunked claims that the U.S. and Ukraine have been collaborating on the production of biological weapons.

Beijing has sent instructions to teachers on how to “correctly” explain the conflict to students, with the U.S. cast as the “main culprit.”

It’s also shored up the official narrative with the circulation of a documentary film predating the Feb. 24 invasion that decries the fall of Russia’s former communist system. “Historical Nihilism and the Soviet Collapse” heaps praise on Putin and Joseph Stalin, while accusing reformers such as Nikita Khrushchev and Mikhail Gorbachev of aiding the U.S. and its allies in weakening the system from within.

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BUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the Russians of gruesome atrocities in Ukraine and told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that those responsible should immediately be brought up on war crimes charges in front of a tribunal like the one established at Nuremberg after World War II.

Over the past few days, grisly images of what appeared to be intentional killings of civilians carried out by Russian forces in Bucha and other towns before they withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv have caused a global outcry and led Western nations to expel scores of Moscow’s diplomats and propose further sanctions, including a ban on coal imports from Russia.

Zelenskyy, speaking via video from Ukraine to U.N. diplomats, said that civilians had been tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.

“They cut off limbs, cut their throats. Women were raped and killed in front of their children,” he said. He asserted that people’s tongues were pulled out “only because their aggressor did not hear what they wanted to hear from them.”

Zelenskyy said that both those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders “must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes” in front of a tribunal similar to what was used in postwar Germany.

Moscow’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said that while Bucha was under Russian control, “not a single local person has suffered from any violent action.” Reiterating what the Kremlin has contended for days, he said that video footage of bodies in the streets was “a crude forgery” staged by the Ukrainians.

“You only saw what they showed you,” he said. “The only ones who would fall for this are Western dilettantes.”

As Zelenskyy spoke to the diplomats, survivors of the monthlong Russian occupation took investigators to body after body of townspeople allegedly shot down by troops. Others simply surveyed the destruction.

In Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, 25-year-old, Dmitriy Yevtushkov searched the rubble of apartment buildings and found that only a photo album remained from his family’s home. In the besieged southern city of Mykolaiv, a passerby stopped briefly to look at the bright blossoms of a shattered flower stand lying among bloodstains, the legacy of a Russian shell that killed nine. The onlooker sketched out the sign of the cross in the air, and moved on.

Associated Press journalists in Bucha have counted dozens of corpses in civilian clothes and interviewed Ukrainians who told of witnessing atrocities. Also, high-resolution satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showed that many of the bodies had been lying in the open for weeks, during the time that Russian forces were in the town.

The dead in Bucha included a pile of six charred bodies, as witnessed by AP journalists. It was not clear who they were or under what circumstances they died. One body was probably that of a child, said Andrii Nebytov, head of police in the Kyiv region. A gunshot wound to the head was visible on one.

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court at The Hague opened an investigation a month ago into possible war crimes in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy stressed that Bucha was only one place and that there are more with similar horrors — a warning echoed by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg, meanwhile, warned that in pulling back from the capital, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military is regrouping its forces in order to deploy them to eastern and southern Ukraine for a “crucial phase of the war.” Russia’s stated goal currently is control of the Donbas, the largely Russian-speaking industrial region in the east that includes the shattered port city of Mariupol.

“Moscow is not giving up its ambitions in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.

While both Ukrainian and Russian representatives sent optimistic signals following their latest round of talks a week ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow won’t accept a Ukrainian demand that a prospective peace deal include an immediate pullout of troops followed by a Ukrainian referendum on the agreement.

In televised remarks Tuesday, Lavrov said a new deal would have to be negotiated if the vote failed, and “we don’t want to play such cat and mouse.”

Ukrainian officials said that the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in towns around Kyiv that were recaptured from Russian forces and that a “torture chamber” was discovered in Bucha.

Zelenskyy told the Security Council there was “not a single crime” that Russian troops hadn’t committed in Bucha.

“The Russian military searched for and purposefully killed anyone who served our country. They shot and killed women outside their houses when they just tried to call someone who is alive. They killed entire families, adults and children, and they tried to burn the bodies,” he said. They used tanks to crush civilians “just for their pleasure,” he said.

On Tuesday, police and other investigators walked the silent streets of Bucha. Survivors who hid in their homes during the Russian occupation of the town, many of them past middle age, wandered past charred tanks and jagged window panes with plastic bags of food and other humanitarian aid. Red Cross workers checked in on intact homes.

Many of the dead seen by AP journalists appeared to have been shot at close range, and some had their hands bound or their flesh burned.

The AP and the PBS series “Frontline” have jointly verified at least 90 incidents during the war that appear to violate international law. The War Crimes Watch Ukraine project is looking into apparent targeted attacks as well as indiscriminate ones.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the images from Bucha revealed “not the random act of a rogue unit” but “a deliberate campaign to kill, to torture, to rape, to commit atrocities.” He said the reports of atrocities were “more than credible.”

“Only non-humans are capable of this,” said Angelica Chernomor, a refugee from Kyiv who crossed into Poland with her two children and saw the photos from Bucha. “Even if people live under a totalitarian regime, they must retain feelings, dignity, but they do not.”

Chernomor is among the more than 4 million Ukrainians who have fled the country in the wake of the Feb. 24 invasion.

Russia has rejected similar accusations of atrocities in the past by accusing its enemies of forging photos and video and using so-called crisis actors.

As Western leaders condemned the killings in Bucha, Romania, Italy, Spain and Denmark expelled dozens of Russian diplomats on Tuesday, following moves by Germany and France. Hundreds of Russian diplomats have been sent home since the start of the invasion, many accused of being spies.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the expulsions a “short-sighted” measure that would complicate communication and warned they would be met with “reciprocal steps.”

The U.S., in coordination with the European Union and Group of Seven nations, will roll out more sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, including a ban on all new investment in the country, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition to discuss the upcoming announcement.

Also, the EU’s executive branch proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia, in what would be the first time the 27-nation bloc has sanctioned the country’s lucrative energy industry over the war. The coal imports amount to an estimated 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) per year.

Just hours before the latest proposal was announced, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that to prevent “new Buchas,” the West must impose the “mother of all sanctions” — on Russian oil and gas.

“A few months of tightening your belts are worth thousands of saved lives,” he said.

But Western nations are divided over how far to go. While some are calling for a boycott of Russian oil and gas, Germany and others fear that such a move could plunge the continent into a severe economic crisis.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Wednesday made a formal determination that Russian troops have committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

“Today, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia’s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,” Blinken said in a statement released as he was traveling to Brussels with President Joe Biden for an emergency summit of NATO leaders.

The assessment was based on a “careful review” of public and intelligence sources since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last month, he said.

America’s top diplomat said the United States would share that information with allies, partners and international institutions tasked with investigating allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“We’ve seen numerous credible reports of indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians, as well as other atrocities. Russia’s forces have destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping centers, and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians killed or wounded,” Blinken said said.

He cited attacks on the civilian population in the besieged city of Mariupol and elsewhere.

Neither Russia nor the U.S. recognizes the authority of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, presenting obvious difficulties for seeking accountability for war crimes committed in Ukraine.

The U.S. could still assist a prosecution before the court, which earlier opened an investigation into atrocities committed in Ukraine, by helping to gather evidence against Russian forces in Ukraine, using some of the vast abilities it has deployed to track and monitor what has been happening in the conflict.

The U.S. could also provide support and backing to a commission of inquiry established by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

War crimes experts have suggested that Russian forces and government officials could also be prosecuted in countries such as Spain and Germany, where legal codes recognize universal jurisdiction, or that the U.S. could bring criminal charges.

Under U.S. law, an American citizen would have to be among the victims for charges to brought under existing statutes.

Two Democratic members of Congress urged Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday to open an investigation into war crimes for the deaths of two Americans in Ukraine — journalist Brent Renaud and Jimmy Hill, who was killed while waiting in a bread line.

“Both Mr. Renaud and Mr. Hill were non-combatants who were not taking any active part in the hostilities, wrote Reps. Ted Lieu and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both from California.

The Department of Justice did not immediately comment on the letter.

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