'Criminal and evil': White House doubles down on condemning Russian attacks
Source: The Guardian
‘Criminal and evil’: White House doubles down on condemning Russian attacks
National security adviser calls brutal attacks, including missile strike on rail station, war crimes but avoids calling it genocide
Ed Pilkington in New York
@edpilkington
Sun 10 Apr 2022 17.42 BST
First published on Sun 10 Apr 2022 16.05 BST
The White House has doubled down on its condemnation of Russian targeting of Ukrainian civilians as war crimes, describing recent events including a missile strike on a railway station as “cruel and criminal and evil” – but stopping short of classifying the brutal attacks as genocide.
Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, took to the TV political shows on Sunday to decry Russia’s “systematic targeting of civilians, the grisly murder of innocent people, the brutality, the depravity” in Ukraine.
He said recent atrocities “absolutely constitutes war crimes”.
But speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, he declined to categorise the horrors of Russia’s war as “genocide”.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/10/white-house-doubles-down-condemns-russian-attacks-war-crimes