Ukraine Updates: Biden Calls for ‘Actual War Crime Trial’ After Bucha Massacre, Labels Putin ‘War Criminal’
“Indeed, this is genocide. The elimination of a whole nation, and the people — we are citizens of Ukraine.”
No words. No words can describe what people found on the streets in places on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Executed civilians. Mass graves. Places soaked in death.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described it as genocide as he criticized the latest sanctions on Russia. He said it’s “not enough.”
Ukraine Live:
Biden Wants a War Crime Trial
But Biden did not call Bucha a “genocide” like Zelenskyy:
“He is a war criminal,” Biden said of Putin Monday morning upon returning to Washington, D.C., vowing that the United States will “continue to provide Ukraine with weapons they need to continue to fight.”
The president added that Putin “should be held accountable,” and said the United States needs to “get all the detail so this can be an actual war crime trial.”
“This guy is brutal,” Biden said. “What is happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone has seen it – I think it is a war crime.”
When asked about additional sanctions, Biden said he is “seeking more sanctions” against Russia and is “going to continue to add sanctions.”
Biden calls for war crimes trial against Putin:
"This guy is brutal, and what's happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone's seen it.” pic.twitter.com/acIMb0XVwq
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 4, 2022
European Countries Pay for Energy in Rubles
Rubles? Roubles? Meh, don’t care. Putin demanded “unfriendly” countries pay for their energy in rubles, which is the Russian currency. Most tried to call his bluff, but a few changed because they get so much oil and gas from Russia.
Latvia switches to ruble payments for gas, entering into a long-term contract with Gazprom until 2030.
"The procedure for settlements in Russian rubles does not formally violate the sanctions" ##
— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) April 4, 2022
Slovakia, Bulgaria and Moldova accepted the payment of Russian gas in rubles.
— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) April 3, 2022
Zelenskyy Video at the Grammys
The Grammys shared a video of Zelenskyy:
“The war doesn’t let us choose who survives and who stays in eternal silence,” the Ukrainian president began. “Our musicians wear body armor instead of tuxedos. They sing to the wounded in hospitals. They sing to the wounded in hospitals, even to those who can’t hear them. But the music will break through anyway.”
He noted, “We defend our freedom. To live. To love. To sound.”
Zelenskyy went on to add, “On our land, we are fighting Russia which brings horrible silence with its bombs. The dead silence. Fill the silence with your music. Fill it today. Tell our story.”
Zelenskyy also added, “Support us in any way you can. Any – but not silence.”
Odesa is Now a Target
Russia has set its eyes on Odesa, another port city, which is in west Ukraine:
The Russian military says it has struck an oil processing plant and fuel depots around the strategic Black Sea port of Odesa.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj.-Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Russian ships and aircraft fired missiles on Sunday to strike the facilities, which he said were used to provide fuel to Ukrainian troops near Mykolaiv.
Konashenkov also said Russian strikes destroyed ammunition depots in Kostiantynivka and Khresyshche.
In an audio message posted by Italian news agency ANSA, Italian photographer Carlo Orlandi said Odessa woke to military sirens at 5:45 a.m. Sunday, followed immediately by the sounds of bombs falling on the port city from two aircraft.
He described a column of dark smoke rising from the targets, and flames from the buildings.
“What we can see is a dense screen of dark smoke, and one explosion after the other,″ Orlandi said.
Earlier in the morning, a spokesman for the Odesa military administration, Sergey Bratchuk, said Odesa had also suffered an air attack overnight.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 4, 2022
Chernihiv is Mostly Gone
No wonder Russia said it would greatly “reduce” military activities around Chernihiv. It’s mostly gone:
The northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv is about 70% destroyed following an assault by Russian troops, Vladyslav Atroshenko, the city’s mayor, said Sunday.
The “consequences” of the attack by Russia in Chernihiv are “severe,” similar to the aftermath in other badly damaged cities and towns like Bucha, where bodies of civilians were found in the streets, as well as in Kharkiv and Mariupol, he said.
The most urgent issues facing residents is a “concentration of Russian troops on the Belarusian border,” and concerns the city will be hit with more missiles and air bombs, Atroshenko added.
“Russians move around Ukraine like at home. And the fact that they left does not mean that they will not come back tomorrow. It takes about an hour and a half for them to get to us … Today we can say it is quiet, there is cleaning, there is demining,” he said.
Don’t Forget Mariupol
The Russians want Mariupol. It’s an important port town. It connects Crimea and Donbas and will harm Ukraine’s economy:
Taking control of the city of Mariupol is “almost certainly a key objective of the Russian invasion”, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has said.
The MoD said troops would have a land corridor from Russia to the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula if the besieged port city in the southeast of the country fell.
On Sunday, it again reported heavy fighting and indiscriminate shelling as Russian forces seek to seize the city.
But the MoD added that Ukrainian fighters “maintain a staunch resistance” and have retained control in key parts of the city.
Genocide
I don’t know how to describe the scenes in Bucha and Irpin:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday reacted to disturbing new images coming out of a suburb of the capital Kyiv showing the bodies of executed civilians by calling Russia’s attacks “genocide.”
“Indeed, this is genocide,” Zelenskyy said during a “Face the Nation” interview on CBS. “The elimination of a whole nation, and the people — we are citizens of Ukraine.”
“We have more than a hundred nationalities. This is about destruction and extermination of all these nationalities,” Zelenskyy told host Margaret Brennan.
“We are the citizens of Ukraine and we don’t want to be subdued to the policy of Russian Federation. This is the reason we are being destroyed and exterminated. And this is happening in the Europe of the 21st century. So this is the torture of the whole nation.”
Zelenskyy Criticizes New Sanctions
Once again Zelenskyy hears condemnations after people discovered the mass graves and dead bodies in areas around Kyiv. The EU demanded the fifth round of sanctions on Russia. The US is weighing more sanctions it can place on Russia.
Zelenskyy said it’s not enough:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that Western nations would impose more sanctions on Russia after the alleged killing of civilians in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities, but emphasized that such a move might not be an adequate punishment.
“There will definitely be a new sanctions package against Russia,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference. “But I’m sure that’s not enough. We need more conclusions. Not only about Russia, but also about the political behavior that actually allowed this evil to come to our land.”
Zelenskyy said hundreds of people have been killed in Bucha and other cities, including civilians who were shot by Russian forces.
The Russian defense ministry has denied any “crimes” in the city of Bucha, which in the past few days quickly transformed into the epicenter of calls for human rights investigations.The ministry insisted that any evidence of atrocities have been “staged” for the media.
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Comments
Zelensky is becoming a symbol that people can rally around in support despite his own flaws.
The left has taken notice of course and are using it to mask their own failures and underhanded tactics.
Zelenskyy is doing a phenomenal job at maximizing his platform to shape public opinion around the world. Not surprising that an entertainer fully understands how to expertly craft and deliver his message. Still, whatever we may think of him, in this context he is performing near flawlessly to wage an IO campaign to assist the people of Ukraine.
Zelensky’s University degree is in Law. He is also a Lawyer who didn’t practice Law.
The big problem here is that both parties have their own agendas and are equally untrustworthy.
yes. this.
We have heard ‘Sell Out Joe” talk about Putin must go-regime change-and now war crimes. Anything can happen of course, but I’ll bet Mad Vlad outlasts Biden and his entire junta. War crimes are a Western moral conviction. The East is not of the same mind. If news of polling are to be believed, Vlad is more popular at home than Sell out Joe is here.
“Anything can happen of course, but I’ll bet Mad Vlad outlasts Biden and his entire junta.”
Anything can happen in a country which puts an ‘X’ into its passport…
I’ll bet Mad Vlad has a lot of material on Bedridden Biden and his crime family they don’t want to come out.
You’re not exactly setting a high bar to be more popular than Biden.
If you remember a few weeks ago, Soros was calling for Putin and Xi to be ousted- now sleepy creepy Joe falls right in line.
I understand Russia and Ukraine like to use the term genocide but by the actual definition this is not genocide
https://www.britannica.com/topic/genocide
Taking land from another country is not a genocide.
“genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”
Not my definition. The UN’s.
Do the reports from Ukraine qualify? Yes. Eye witness accounts of how those bodies in those photographs stopped being living human beings fall entirely under that description.
Had Russia occupied the land and merely oppressed the people living there, they’d have received all the criticism they had for the first month of the war.
They didn’t just do that though. They also callously and deliberately murdered many of the people living there.
But had anyone asked why? Why do the want control of the ports? What do they want to ship out of there, that they have to protect the Donbas corridor by severely debilitating the remainder of western Ukraine? What is their ultimate aim? It’s more than the machinations of a man gone mad; it is strategic.
The Crimea is a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea. If Russia controls the ports then no entity Ukrainian or otherwise can use them to stage an attack. Odessa is the major port on the Black Sea.
Huge amounts of traffic, in the Soviet era it was the busiest port in the USSR. Similarly important today. It’s a warm weather port which is hugely important plus the city is absolutely gorgeous with lots of tourists.
Ukraine couldn’t export or import jack squat by sea without Russian approval if it is lost. Reconfiguring the transport network to ship out Ukrainian grain by truck and train instead of by barges down river then by sea is doable but more costly.
They are being killed because they are in the way of Russia taking a piece of land from Ukraine, not for being Ukrainian.
We also don’t know what happened, that is why there should be an investigation by some organization other than the Ukrainian government.
Here is what Lemkin himself said about it
“criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group. The acts are directed against groups as such, and individuals are selected for destruction only because they belong to these groups.”
Going to war to seize land from a neighboring country doesn’t fit.
The sanctions on Russia are also major sacrifices the west has collectively made and are very clearly making something of a difference in the Russian economy. We have no obligation to stop Russia by force, and a lot of reasons not to enter the war (among other things it could mean WW3).
I find myself giving you a lot of thumbs up lately.
Thank you.
What major sacrifices have we made? Europe maybe, not the US.
At what point, do we not sit on the sidelines? When our enemies grow stronger and form a multinational alliance including China, North Korea, Iran, and any other dictators willing to jump in?
‘At what point do we not sit on the sidelines’ when the direct national security interests of the US are threatened by the specific actions of another Nation or Transnational entity.
War. With Russia. A nuclear power. One which has not attacked the US. One which has not attacked a Nation allied to the US. That is what you seem to be suggesting. Well I vehemently disagree with that idea but there is a process identified in our Constitution to declare a state of War against another Nation. It would be very nice if all of us, including our political leadership remembered that and adhered to it.
You don’t find skyrocketing food prices to be sacrifice?
You don’t find the way our state of the art Javelin system is right now being studied by Russian engineers who are at this moment making the blueprints for tanks that could resist them (now that they know what they need to be able to do) not a sacrifice?
Higher oil prices when oil was already going up-Not a sacrifice?
Upcoming higher price of all appliances due to sanctioning a major producer of metals-Not a sacrifice yet?
Calling the United States “on the sidelines” is just wrong. Saying it is smart enough not to start the third world war-I support that as should you.
Saber rattling towards China should come with the warning that the Imperial Army of Japan was vastly superior to anything China has in 1937.
I’m going to be over-skeptical about any news coming out of this conflict, regardless of origin. I’m making no excuses, I’m just not accepting anything at face value with less than a week or two for additional facts to come out.
You’ll be glad to hear then that the Russian murder of civilians in Bucha has been traced back to 11th March.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html
Of course, the Russian media is blaming the British for it. I kid thee not:
https://nitter.net/francska1/status/1510993878018670595
Atrocity stories are sometimes true, but often they are not. It’s like hate crimes here in the USA; sometimes they happen, but often they are reported without having happened. Pallywood is also a thing.
And sometimes fake atrocity stories lead to true ones not being believed. The lies told about the Germans in WW1 meant that people had a hard time believing the truths told about them in WW2.
Cf the Boy Who Cried Wolf. The true moral of which is that even liars sometimes tell the truth.
Very true, truer words never spoken which is why we should avoid jumping to conclusions and instead work to get a neutral third party investigation going that could be trusted.
And where can we find a neutral third party who can be trusted? I don’t think one exists.
The official definition of “genocide” is so generic as to be meaningless. All it does is make people ask, if that’s the definition then what’s so wrong with genocide in the first place? Why is it worse than a similar number of murders committed for some other purpose?
Typically it’s the state sponsorship or collusion amongst many people that elevates it above common murder.
Serial killers receive the most serious sentences in most judicial systems, so it’s not as though mass murder by an individual is ignored or trivialised. Mass murder or other genocide (e.g. Holodomor) as a state policy is treated by the international community just the same as an individual serial killer is treated by a local one: revulsion and strong response.
Are 6 million deaths by genocide worse than 6 million deaths by one maniac with a lot of ammunition? I think so: One of those requires just one maniac.
State sponsorship is not the distinction. Stalin and Mao killed a lot more people than Hitler, but they weren’t aiming at specific identifiable groups, just at people in general, so technically they weren’t guilty of genocide. How does that make their murders less bad?
Pay attention here:
Everybody is lying to us, and every one has an angle.
There are no good guys here at all.
Orban even came out an told us…
It is all B.S….
Not in those words.
We are being played like a fish on a line.
The best defense is not to play at all.
Don’t bite.
“The best defense is not to play at all.
Don’t bite.”
Lockheed , Raytheon, and others like them will dictate what we do.
Today Britain reused a request to have a Security Council meeting on Bucha.
https://twitter.com/prawst/status/1511176416217350153
I wonder why?
Because they haven’t the balls to stand on their own back feet.
War Crimes!
That’s it, send in the 82nd Airborne
Anyone else see that’s what this is about?
Yes, with Gen Miley Woke leading the charge. That’s assuming the 81st Airborne has their pronouns correct.
Everybody needs to sit back and look at everything here with an exceptionally critical eye and take NOTHING on its face value.
I’m going to point out some things as one who has actually investigated claims like this before and point out some of the underlying “issues” here that point to more propaganda than truth in the claims.
I’m not picking a side (I personally don’t like any of them), have no dog in the fight and have no preferred outcome- I am just calling for an honest, transparent and unbiased analysis of the evidence to get to the truth ( wherever it may point)
First- Both combatants have a deliberate and vested interest in managing public perception for their own goals. ( they are both going to lie and present the best case to support their position)
Second- The UN, EU and every other organization have agenda’s of their own and have legitimate claims of bias so they cannot be trusted on the strength of their claims either.
Third- The “Military Industrial Complex” clearly has a financial motive and has an agenda.
Fourth- The “left” and the associated Goebbels’s propaganda services ( the media) clearly NEED the Russians to be the “enemy” for a variety of reasons and they have a demonstrated bias and ability to fabricate news at will to forward their agenda.
On the tactical side ( physical evidence)
There has been no autopsy to determine cause and time of death nor have there been vetted interviews to determine circumstances of these deaths. (that means we simply don’t know at this point)
On these graves- here is a trained observation that leads me to believe these are in fact staged for effect. ( based on actual experience)
1- The combat units in question are mechanized infantry ( not heavy armor). This is a lightly armored fast mover designed to advance quickly and soften up for heavier forces. ( you can tell by the burnt vehicles what these are and this is a common doctrine for Russia)
2- Those graves were clearly machine dug (1 bucket width) in a trench maybe 6 ft deep ( based on size of dirt pile) and about 20 ft long. (back hoe or similar) That takes time to dig.
3- Those type of military assets are thin skinned and do not accompany mech units because of their lack of armor and slow speed and are usually 2 or 3rd echelon behind line units. ( plus none of them seem to be destroyed anywhere and they would be prime slow soft skinned targets)
If the Russians “retreated” then its highly unlikely they detached unprotected soft targets for burial and execution detail.
4- There is no indication or evidence these people were actually taken there and killed. ( like we see in WWII Nazi photos and movies which is the effect I believe the propagandists are aiming for)
Basically we have images with no supporting context, information or verification accompanied by what amounts to an “infomercial” trying to sell a specific story.
I advise extreme caution and critical scrutiny before accepting any claim from any side as “true” and certainly accept NOTHING on face value alone.
Well said.
Taking your points in order,
1 – irrelevant. You don’t need heavy armour to commit war crimes
2 – I haven’t seen the evidence that they were machine dug. A trench that size can easily be dug in a few hours by a large number of people, whether they’re civilians at gunpoint or the murderous soldiers that did the shooting. However, taking your interpretation at face value and assuming mechanical digging: Just because the invading army didn’t bring JCBs with them doesn’t mean that the local civilian population had none.
3 – Engineer vehicles often operate on the battlefield, to recover damaged armour. The mass graves were not on even on the battlefield, they were in a rear area.
3b – You said none of them seem to be destroyed anywhere. So:
BAT-2 : https://postlmg.cc/QF2k5myt
BREM-1 : https://postimg.cc/tn6F3QPr (one of three abandoned or captured)
4 – It’s possible that 280 civilians all had a heart attack and died from COVID, needing rapid burial in a mass grave. It’s possible. But since we have video footage of Russian military units murdering civilians, eye witness accounts of Russian soldiers murdering civilians, dead bound civilians with their hands tied and a mass grave with 280 people in it, I’m going to make the assumption that this needs investigating as a war crime.
Your request for skepticism and scrutiny is reasonable and valid. Specific reports must be investigated individually. Collectively I think we’re well past reasonable doubt.
“In war, truth is the first casualty.” This quote has been attributed to Aeschylus, a 6th BCE Greek tragedian noted for his “copious use of imagery, mythic allusion, grand language, wordplay and riddles.” It is only fitting, therefore, that the man who first gave word to the concept of modern-day war-time propaganda would see his quote come to life in the present-day Ukraine. The Kiev government and their Western information warfare advisers may have coopted all of Aeschylus’ playwright devices to craft a modern-day tragedy in the Ukrainian town of Bucha that exemplifies the notion of the lie as not just a byproduct, but also a weapon of war.