{"id":1396640,"date":"2022-03-23T14:44:48","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T18:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1396640"},"modified":"2022-03-23T14:45:02","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T18:45:02","slug":"us-government-finds-russian-forces-have-committed-war-crimes-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/us-government-finds-russian-forces-have-committed-war-crimes-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"US Government Finds Russian Forces Have Committed War Crimes In Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fus-government-finds-russian-forces-have-committed-war-crimes-in-ukraine%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1396640&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the U.S. government \u201cassesses that members of Russia\u2019s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The administration has been pressed for weeks on whether Russia has committed war crimes in Ukraine, and Blinken\u2019s declaration marks the official stance by the U.S. government on the subject.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday, I can announce that, based on information currently available, the U.S. government assesses that members of Russia\u2019s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine,\u201d Blinken said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources.\u00a0 As with any alleged crime, a court of law with jurisdiction over the crime is ultimately responsible for determining criminal guilt in specific cases,\u201d Blinken continued.<\/p>\n<p>Blinken, in his statement, pointed out that just last week he noted that he <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/echoing-biden-blinken-believes-russia-committing-war-crimes\/story?id=83508109\">personally<\/a> believes war crimes have been committed by Russia in Ukraine. His comment echoed that of President Joe Biden, who <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/16\/biden-calls-putin-a-war-criminal\/\">said<\/a> March 16 that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin to be \u201ca war criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_7396717\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\">\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-7396717\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">TOPSHOT \u2013 A pedestrian walks amid debris in a street following a shelling in Ukraine\u2019s second-biggest city of Kharkiv on March 7, 2022. \u2013 On the 12th day of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine March 7, 2022, Russian forces pressed a siege of the key southern port of Mariupol and sought to increase pressure on the capital Kyiv. Kyiv remains under Ukrainian control as does Kharkiv in the east, with the overall Russian ground advance little changed over the last 24 hours in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance. (Photo by Sergey BOBOK \/ AFP) (Photo by SERGEY BOBOK\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Despite Blinken and Biden\u2019s comments on the subject, the administration as a whole has, until Wednesday, been quick to point to the \u201clegal process\u201d in officially making such a declaration.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/18\/russia-insults-biden-after-he-called-putin-war-criminal\/\">Biden<\/a> called Putin \u201ca war criminal,\u201d White House press secretary Jen Psaki said \u201che was speaking from his heart\u201d and that the \u201clegal process\u201d to make any official stance was ongoing \u2014 a process that Blinken also mentioned in his statement on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI noted then that the deliberate targeting of civilians is a war crime,\u201d Blinken said, referring back to his earlier comments where he expressed his personal beliefs. \u201cI emphasized that Department of State and other U.S. government experts were documenting and assessing potential war crimes in Ukraine.\u201d <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/06\/antony-blinken-credible-reports-war-crimes-putin-russia\/\">(RELATED:\u00a0US Is Documenting \u2018Credible Reports\u2019 Of War Crimes Against Putin, Blinken Says)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Blinken <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/04\/us-embassy-ukraine-russian-attack-nuclear-power-plant-war-crime\/\">highlighted<\/a> various reports \u201cof indiscriminate attacks and attacks deliberately targeting civilians\u201d in his latest statement. The secretary of state pointed to reports indicating Russian forces have \u201cdestroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure\u201d and more as evidence of war crimes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany of the sites Russia\u2019s forces have hit have been clearly identifiable as in-use by civilians,\u201d Blinken said. \u201cThis includes the Mariupol maternity hospital, as the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressly noted in a March 11 report. It also includes a strike that hit a Mariupol theater, clearly marked with the word \u2018\u0434\u0435\u0442\u0438\u2019 \u2014 Russian for \u2018children\u2019 \u2014 in huge letters visible from the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPutin\u2019s forces used these same tactics in Grozny, Chechnya, and Aleppo, Syria, where they intensified their bombardment of cities to break the will of the people.\u00a0 Their attempt to do so in Ukraine has again shocked the world and, as President Zelenskyy has soberly attested, \u2018bathed the people of Ukraine in blood and tears,&#8217;\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. government\u2019s findings coincide with Biden\u2019s trip to Europe. He travels to Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday to attend an extraordinary NATO Summit and a European Council Summit regarding Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. The president will also <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2022\/03\/21\/biden-travel-poland-russias-war-ukraine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">stop<\/a> in Warsaw, Poland, during the trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the U.S. government \u201cassesses that members of Russia\u2019s forces have committed war crimes in Ukraine.\u201dThe administration has been pressed for weeks on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1396640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}