WASHINGTON: Washington on Thursday warned Moscow about what some observers describe as war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine. U.S. officials say Russia is “turning to a strategy of laying waste to population centers” in Ukraine, as high-level talks between the warring parties made no progress.
“We’ve seen very credible reports of deliberate attacks on civilians, which would under the Geneva Conventions constitute a war crime,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price, though he did not specifically accuse Russia of committing such crimes.
Russian President Vladimir “Putin’s plan to quickly capture Ukraine, it is clear now, has failed,” Price said of the two-week-old invasion. “So, he is now turning to a strategy of laying waste to population centers to try to break the will of the people of Ukraine, something he will not be able to do.”
Russia has denied targeting civilians in its invasion of Ukraine.
Vice President Kamala Harris said in Poland that she supported a United Nations inquiry into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that would look at “all alleged rights violations and abuses, and related crimes.”
Harris spoke before meeting in Warsaw with Polish President Andrzej Duda in a show of U.S. support for NATO’s allies in Eastern Europe.
“Absolutely, there should be an investigation, and we should all be watching,” she said.
Duda added, “It is obvious to us that in Ukraine, Russians are committing war crimes.”
On Wednesday, Amnesty International said an investigation it conducted into the March 3 Russian airstrike that reportedly killed 47 civilians in the city of Chernihiv concluded that the events there “may constitute a war crime.”
The global human rights group said interviews and video analysis indicated unguided aerial bombs known as “dumb bombs” were used to mostly target civilians standing in line for food.
Harris’ comments came one day after a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol killed at least three people, including a child, according to Ukrainian officials.
(VOA)
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