Daily Breeze (Torrance)

U.S. says Russia's guilty of war crimes

- By Karl Ritter and Geir Moulson

MUNICH >> The United States has determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday, insisting that “justice must be served” to the perpetrato­rs.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Harris said the internatio­nal community has both a moral and a strategic interest in pursuing those crimes, pointing to a danger of other authoritar­ian government­s taking advantage if internatio­nal rules are undermined.

“Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population — gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape and deportatio­n,” Harris said. She also cited “execution-style killings, beatings and electrocut­ion.”

President Joe Biden's administra­tion formally determined last March that Russian troops had committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders. A determinat­ion of crimes against humanity goes a step further, indicating that attacks against civilians are being carried out in a widespread and systematic manner.

“Russian authoritie­s have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people, from Ukraine to Russia, including children,” Harris said. “They have cruelly separated children from their families.”

She also pointed to the attack in mid-March on a theater in the strategic port city of Mariupol where civilians had been sheltering, which killed hundreds, and to the images of civilians' bodies left on the streets of Bucha after the Russian pullback from the Kyiv area last spring.

Harris said that, as a former prosecutor and former head of California's Department of Justice, she knows “the importance of gathering facts and holding them up against the law.”

“In the case of Russia's actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt,” she said.

“These are crimes against humanity.”

U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who also was attending the Munich conference, said in a statement issued as Harris spoke that “we reserve crimes against humanity determinat­ions for the most egregious crimes.”

The new determinat­ion underlines the “staggering extent” of suffering inflicted on Ukrainian civilians and “also reflects the deep commitment of the United States to holding members of Russia's forces and other Russian officials accountabl­e,” he said.

Russia's nearly yearlong invasion of Ukraine, has dominated discussion­s. Harris told the assembled participan­ts: “Let us all agree — on behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown, justice must be served.”

“Such is our moral interest,” she said. “We also have a significan­t strategic interest.”

“No nation is safe in a world where one country can violate the sovereignt­y and territoria­l integrity of another, where crimes against humanity are committed with impunity, where a country with imperialis­t ambitions can go unchecked,” Harris added.

If Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds in attacking internatio­nal rules and norms, “other nations could feel emboldened to follow his violent example,” she said. “Other authoritar­ian powers could seek to bend the world to their will, through coercion, disinforma­tion and even brute force.”

Harris' audience Saturday didn't include any Russian officials. Conference organizers decided not to invite them this year.

Amid the Western officials defending arms supplies to Ukraine, China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, stood out by calling for an end to the war through peace talks, saying Beijing was “deeply worried about the expansion and longterm effect of this war.”

China has refused to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine or to impose sanctions on Moscow. Without naming any countries, Wang said “there may be forces” that don't want the war to stop any time soon.

“What they care about is not the life and death of the Ukrainian people, nor the increasing damage to Europe. They probably have bigger strategic goals than Ukraine,” he said.

Wang said Beijing planned to present a “position paper on the political settlement of the Ukraine issue.”

Asked on the sidelines of the event about the U.S. determinat­ion of crimes against humanity, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba replied that “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.”

 ?? SVEN HOPPE — FOR THE AP ?? Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech during the Munich Security Conference in Munich on Saturday.
SVEN HOPPE — FOR THE AP Vice President Kamala Harris delivers a speech during the Munich Security Conference in Munich on Saturday.

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