“You can’t help but see these images as a punch to the gut,” Blinken told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Since the aggression, we’ve come out and said that we believe that Russian forces have committed war crimes, and we’ve been working to document that, to provide the information we have to the relevant instructions and organizations that will put all of this together. And there needs to be accountability for it.”
Last month, the State Department formally accused Russian forces of war crimes in Ukraine. Asked Sunday whether Russian troops were committing genocide, Blinken said, “We will look hard and document everything that we see, put it all together, make sure that the relevant institutions and organizations that are looking at this, including the State Department, have everything they need to assess exactly what took place in Ukraine, who’s responsible and what it amounts to.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was also asked later Sunday by Bash if the Russian actions in Ukraine constituted genocide, but he opted to call it “a brutality against civilians we haven’t seen in Europe for decades.”
“The elimination of the whole nation, and the people. We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than 100 nationalities. This is about the destruction and extermination of all these nationalities,” Zelensky told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
CNN has not been able to independently confirm the details around the men’s deaths. CNN has requested comment from the Russian defense ministry regarding allegations of the execution of civilians in the Kyiv region and other parts of Ukraine.
Also Sunday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for further action against Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, telling NBC’s “Meet The Press” that “now is the time to double down on the pressure.”
“I think we are really looking at this with our eyes wide open and seeing very clearly the threat he poses, not just to Ukraine, as we can watch every night…
Source : cnn
