The White House pushed back on the Kremlin’s claims it was “unacceptable and unforgivable” for President Joe Biden to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal, outlining the process for war crimes investigations.
Biden labeled Putin a war criminal on Wednesday after weeks of the White House avoiding the phrase, saying simply, “He is a war criminal.” Press secretary Jen Psaki defended those claims during Thursday’s press briefing.
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“It’s pretty rich coming from a country whose actions are unforgivable in the eyes of the global community,” Psaki said of the Kremlin’s reaction.
Psaki also outlined parts of the State Department’s process of beginning a war crimes investigation.
“It’s a legal process where they review a lot of the evidence, and then they provide that evidence and data and information to the international bodies that oversee the investigations,” Psaki said. “And the international bodies that oversee the investigations would make determinations about violations of international law and whether it is a war crime by their standards, and what the consequences would be. We would be supporting those efforts.”
Other elected Democrats have deployed the “war criminal” phrase. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, currently in a tough midterm reelection campaign, had implored Biden Wednesday morning to rely on the language.
“Call it what is,” he said.
U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield has referred to Putin’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians as “war crimes,” but the White House had so far demurred.
Christo Grozev, an investigator with Bellingcat, a global investigatory platform, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday his group had documented “more than 350 incidents that have caused harm to civilians,” with more than 10% (35-40 in total) appearing “to be egregious cases of violations of the laws of warfare.”
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Vice President Kamala Harris said last week there “absolutely” should be an investigation into possible war crimes in the days after the maternity hospital bombing.
