Pentagon spokesman John Kirby got emotional while condemning Russia’s “depravity” in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s leadership.
“It’s hard to look at what he’s doing, what his forces are doing in Ukraine, and think that any ethical, moral individual could justify that. It’s difficult to look at some of the images and imagine that any well-thinking, serious, mature leader would do that,” Kirby said during Friday’s briefing when he was asked if the Pentagon viewed Putin to be a “rational actor,” pausing through his answer to compose himself.
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“So I can’t talk to a psychology, but I think we can all speak to as depravity,” Kirby continued, later apologizing for his response.
The typically stoic Pentagon spokesman John Kirby gets choked up talking about the images of Russian “depravity” coming out of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/c044G6wBaa
— Caitlin Doornbos (@CaitlinDoornbos) April 29, 2022
Kirby then broached Putin’s frequently invoked war justifications, which he dismissed as “B.S.”
“It’s hard to square [Putin’s], let’s call it what it is, B.S., that this is about Nazism and Ukraine and it’s about protecting Russians in Ukraine and it’s about defending Russian national interests when none of them, none of them, were threatened by Ukraine,” he said. “It’s hard to square that rhetoric by what he’s actually doing inside Ukraine to innocent people shot in the back of the head, hands tied behind their backs with pregnant women being killed, hospitals being bombed. I mean, it’s just unconscionable.”
The Pentagon has said it has seen evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, though on Thursday, a senior defense official said for the first time that the Pentagon had seen “indications” that Russian forces executed civilians.
“We at the Department do believe that Russian forces have committed war crimes,” the official said. “We do believe Russian forces have committed atrocities. We have seen on our own indications that they have participated in executions of Ukrainian civilians.”
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Ukraine’s General Prosecutor Iryna Venediktova accused 10 Russian soldiers, by name, on Thursday of committing human rights abuses in Ukraine. Her office also has already opened 8,000 cases of alleged war crimes, and they have identified 500 suspects so far, including Russian government ministers and military commanders.
A “short investigation” concluded that these soldiers “captured unarmed civilians hostage, killed them with hunger and thirst, held them on their knees with tied hands and closed eyes, mocked and beaten,” Venediktova said.
