The United States (US) Vice President Kamala Harris said on Saturday that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, insisting that “justice must be served” to the perpetratrors.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Harris said that 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, reports AP.
She said, “Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population — gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation.”
Harris also cited “execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution.”
“Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people, from Ukraine to Russia, including children. They have cruelly separated children from their families,” she alleged.
Kamala Harris 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.
The US formally determined last March that Russian troops had committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders.
Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul
