By Tom Ozimek
February 18, 2023 Updated: February 19, 2023
A woman walks out from a
residential building which was hit by a Russian rocket in the city center of
Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 5, 2023. (Andrii Marienko/AP Photo)
The Biden administration
has formally concluded that Russia committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine, according to Vice President Kamala
Harris, who told a security conference on Feb. 18 that evidence examined by the
U.S. State Department leaves “no doubt” that Russian forces have carried out
atrocities.
Harris made the remarks
on Feb. 18 at the Munich Security Conference in Germany,
where she listed a series of acts allegedly committed by the Russian military
in its nearly year-long invasion of Ukraine that Moscow calls a “special
military operation.”
“Russian forces have
pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population—gruesome
acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation,” Harris said, also alleging Russian
forces engaged in “execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution.”
While the Biden
administration officially determined last March that Russian troops had
committed war crimes in Ukraine, the State Department has since been weighing
new evidence to determine whether Moscow’s actions meet the more stringent
definition of “crimes against humanity.”
“In the case of Russia’s
actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards,
and there is no doubt,” Harris said. “These are crimes against humanity.”
‘Most
Egregious’
Specifically, a
determination of “crimes against humanity” is made in cases where attacks
against civilians are being carried out in a manner that’s systematic and
widespread. Such a determination was reserved for what Secretary of State
Antony Blinken said were “the most egregious crimes.”
Blinken issued a statement on Feb. 18 mirroring
the thrust of Harris’s remarks, noting that the State Department had carried
out a “careful analysis of the law and available facts” and that the actions of
Russian forces in Ukraine meet the “crimes against humanity” standard.
His statement indicated
that the State Department review found that Russian forces have committed
“execution-style killings of Ukrainian men, women, and children; torture of
civilians in detention through beatings, electrocution, and mock executions;
rape; and, alongside other Russian officials, have deported hundreds of
thousands of Ukrainian civilians to Russia, including children who have been
forcibly separated from their families.”
Blinken added that such
acts were neither random nor spontaneous but were rather “part of the Kremlin’s
widespread attack against Ukraine’s civilian population.”
Harris said at the
conference that the perpetrators of those crimes “will be held to account.”
Her speech came as
Western leaders met in Munich to take stock of the worst military conflict to
have gripped Europe since World War II.
Moscow hadn’t issued any
statements in response to the U.S. government’s “crimes against humanity”
determination at the time of publication.
Kremlin
Accuses Kyiv of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’
However, the Russian
Embassy in the UK accused the
Ukrainian military in March 2022 of carrying out both “war crimes” and “crimes
against humanity” in eastern Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of “exterminating” the
civilian population in the so-called Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov alleged in a statement on
Feb. 18 that the United States and its allies were waging a “comprehensive
hybrid war” against Russia that Washington had been preparing for a long time,
using Ukrainian “radicals as a battering ram.”
Lavrov accused the United
States and its allies of trying to defeat Russia on the battlefield, destroy
its economy with sanctions, isolate it internationally, and turn Russia into a
“rogue state.”
He also accused Western
powers of being “obsessed with a maniacal striving to restore a neocolonialist
unipolar world order” by trying to hamstring Russia’s reemergence as a major
player on the international stage.
Russia has long argued
that the United States meddled in Ukraine to establish the country as a NATO
bulwark on Russia’s borders and that Moscow’s actions against Kyiv are a kind
of preemptive strike taken in self-defense to neutralize a growing military
threat.
The Kremlin has also accused Western
backers of Ukraine of provoking an escalation of the armed conflict that would
“inevitably” bring about a “huge number of victims and large-scale
destruction.”
The nearly year-long
conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted millions from their
homes, and hurt the global economy.
Ukraine
Alleges ‘Genocidal War’
Ukrainian Foreign
Minister Dmytro Kuleba was asked on the sidelines of the Munich Security
Conference what he thought about the U.S. determination that Russia had
committed “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine.
“Russia waged a genocidal
war against Ukrainians because they do not recognize our identity and they do
not think we deserve to exist as a sovereign nation,” he replied.
“Everything that stems
from that is crimes against humanity, war crimes, and various other atrocities
committed by the Russian army in the territory of Ukraine.
“Let lawyers sort out
specifically which act belongs where in terms of legal qualification.”
Kuleba expressed hope
that Western powers would provide Kyiv with its much sought-after fighter jets.
The West has been
reluctant to provide the jets, fearing an escalation that might spill across
the border into NATO-allied countries and potentially trigger the alliance’s
Article 5 provisions that an attack on one is considered an attack on all.
No comments:
Post a Comment