The president of United States, Joe Biden called his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a “war criminal” on Wednesday for his “barbaric” military tactics during the invasion of Ukraine.
“He is a war criminal,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question during an event at the White House.
Until now, the US government had avoided using that term to refer to Putin, although Vice President Kamala Harris said last week that there should be an investigation into the possibility that Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine.
Russian complaint
For its part, the Kremlin considered the US president’s statement “unacceptable and inexcusable.” “We consider such rhetoric by the head of a state whose bombs killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world unacceptable and inexcusable,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, quoted by the TASS and Ria Novosti agencies.
Shortly after Biden’s remarks, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki noted that the president “was speaking from the heart and in relation to what he has seen on television.”
“And that is barbaric actions of a brutal dictator during his invasion of a foreign country,” Psaki added during his daily press conference.
The spokeswoman clarified that for now the The State Department has not made a formal statement accusing Russia of having committed war crimes, and that the “legal” review on that issue “is still ongoing” at the headquarters of US diplomacy.
The United States said earlier this month that it is “documenting” Russian attacks in Ukraine and their impact on civilians to ensure that Russia is “accountable” if it is found to have committed war crimes.
Following the Russian attack on the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia on March 4, the American embassy in Ukraine described that aggression as a “war crime”.
However, the White House avoided referring to what happened in those terms and the State Department asked its embassies around the world not to spread the tweet from the legation in Ukraine that used those words.
Last week, the The Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a portal to contact witnesses, both from Ukraine as well as from other countries in which the court has opened an investigation, which may provide evidence of war crimes or crimes against humanity. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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