US President Joe Biden first accused his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of “genocide” in the war in Ukraine, where his forces are intensifying their campaign to seize the strategic port city of Mariupol.
The accusation of Biden, who had already called Putin a “war criminal,” comes as Moscow prepares a powerful offensive in eastern Ukraine that Washington says could involve the use of chemical weapons.
“Yes, I called it a genocide,” Biden told reporters hours after a speech in Iowa in which he first used the word. “Let the lawyers decide if it qualifies or not, but it seems to me that it does,” he added.
“True words of a true leader” because “calling things by their name is essential to oppose evil,” Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky reacted via Twitter.
Accusations of war crimes against the Kremlin have multiplied since the beginning of the invasion on February 24, especially after the recent discovery of hundreds of civilians allegedly killed in Bucha, on the outskirts of kyiv.
On Wednesday, Zelensky also accused the invading forces of perpetrating “hundreds of rapes” on women and also girls: “Hundreds of rape cases have been recorded, including those of underage girls and very young children. Even a baby! “.
fighting underground
While the damage of the conflict in the areas around kyiv until recently occupied is still being gauged, the death toll is feared especially high in Mariupol, where the regional governor warned of between 20,000 and 22,000 deaths.
Kremlin troops have been besieging this port city on the Sea of Azov for more than 40 days, the last obstacle to uniting the pro-Russian areas of Donbas (east) and the annexed Crimean peninsula (south).
Experts see its fall as inevitable, although Ukrainian forces maintain a strong defense. His army said on Wednesday that Russian bombardments continue, focused on the port and the large Azovstal metallurgical plant.
This huge industrial complex, one of the largest in Europe, is a focus of major resistance, with fighters using a system of tunnels under the plant to attack the Russians.
“It is a city within a city,” said Eduard Basurin, a representative of pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region.
“There are several underground levels dating back to Soviet times so you can’t bomb them. You have to go underground to clear them and it will take time,” he said.
Embedded in a Russian army convoy, AFP journalists were able to see the devastation in the city, including in the theater where 300 people were killed last month in a bombing attributed to Russia.
On Monday, Ukrainian sources denounced the alleged use of chemical substances in Mariupol that caused respiratory and neurological problems in its troops, information that has not been confirmed.
The head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, said he could not confirm these allegations, but said he had “credible information” about the possibility that Russia would use “chemical agents” in its siege of Mariupol.
exhumation of corpses
From Russia’s Far East, where he met with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, Putin said the offensive would continue “harmoniously, calmly” until “the objectives set were met, minimizing losses.”
He also called “false information” the atrocities denounced by Ukrainians and Western countries in Bucha, near kyiv, which the Kremlin had previously branded as a “set-up”.
Anatoly Fedoruk, mayor of this city where dozens of bodies were found in the streets after the Russian withdrawal, said that more than 400 people were found dead and 25 women were raped.
In nearby Gostomel, war crimes investigators are beginning to study the events that occurred, exhuming bodies to document how they died. One of them was that of the mayor, whose wife fainted when she saw the body emerge.
The municipality estimates that there are 400 missing,” a regional prosecutor, Andrii Tkach, told AFP. “We are trying to find out who killed them. All the bodies may not be found.”
Inhuman
The threat has now moved to the east, the scene of intense bombing, with Russian troops concentrating on the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Donbas.
Satellite images from the US firm Maxar Technologies and a senior Pentagon official said the Kremlin was massing troops around the city of Izium.
Fear of an offensive has precipitated the flight of many civilians from eastern Ukraine, especially from the cities of Kramatorsk and neighboring Sloviansk.
“What is happening is inhuman, (Putin) is a fascist. I don’t know what to call him, the devil incarnate,” said Valentina Oleynikova, an 82-year-old retiree fleeing Kramatorsk with her husband.
More than 4.6 million Ukrainian refugees have fled their country since Putin ordered the invasion, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. To them are added more than 7 million internally displaced persons.
