The White House has reinforced its condemnation of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians as war crimes, calling recent events, including Friday’s rocket attack on a train station, “cruel and criminal and evil” – but not classifying the brutal attacks as genocide.
Joe Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan went on political TV shows Sunday to denounce Russia’s “systematic attacks on civilians, the horrific murder of innocent people, the brutality, the depravity” in Ukraine.
He said the recent atrocities were “absolutely war crimes”.
But speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, he declined to categorize the horrors of the Russian war as “genocide.”
When asked if the recent attacks could be labeled as anything other than genocide, Sullivan replied, “The label is less important than the fact that these acts are cruel and criminal and wrong and evil and must be acted upon decisively.”
Sullivan explained his reluctance to use the term “genocide” in an interview with ABC’s This Week. He said the State Department will collect evidence through its special unit and timely conduct a legal analysis according to the definition of genocide under international law.
“We haven’t made a decision on genocide yet,” he said. “That is a finding that we are working through systematically.”
The missile attack on the Kramatorsk train station in eastern Ukraine has intensified debate over how Russia’s attacks on civilians should be handled – and thus how to deal with Vladimir Putin and other high-ranking Russians in future international law enforcement proceedings. At least 50 people, including five children, were killed.
Genocide was first codified in international law in 1948 by the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was passed by the United Nations General Assembly. According to the UN definition, genocide includes killing and otherwise inflicting destruction “in whole or in part” on “a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
The need to prove a deliberate attack on an entire group of people makes the legal burden very high. In contrast, “war crimes” are defined in international law as a specific set of acts that are more easily prosecuted, including “premeditated killing”, torture or inhumane treatment, destruction of property and violation of the rights of prisoners of war.
Investigations are underway to collect evidence of possible war crimes related to the brutal Russian campaign. These include efforts in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, where mass graves were found after Russian troops withdrew.
After the Bucha atrocities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of genocide. But Biden has sidestepped the term and embraced another highly charged legal concept of international law, personally accusing Putin of being a “war criminal.”
In Congress, politicians from both main parties were willing to embrace the idea that genocide was taking place in Ukraine.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week, “When we wantonly murder innocent civilians because they are who they are, be it their religion, race or nationality, that is genocide. And Mr. Putin is to blame for that.”
On Sunday, Liz Cheney, a Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, also invoked genocide.
“This is clearly genocide,” she told CNN, adding that Europe must understand that it is funding Putin’s “genocidal campaign” by buying Russian oil and gas.