Cheney added that European countries should “understand that they are financing this genocidal campaign” through the purchase of oil and gas from Russia and should impose an embargo on Russian oil and gas. At least 50 people, including five children, were killed and nearly 100 injured Friday in a Russian rocket attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk, where they were waiting to be evacuated, Ukrainian officials said on Friday. World leaders condemned the attack, and the State Department called it “another example of the Russian government’s unwarranted brutal war that is sowing irrational death and destruction in Ukraine.” The Biden government has accused Russia of war crimes and supported investigations into Russia’s actions in Ukraine, helping to document the atrocities, but did not call the killings “genocide.” The United Nations defines genocide as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”, including “the killing of members of a group”, “causing serious physical or mental harm to members of the group “and” deliberately causing the group living conditions that are expected to result in its natural disaster in whole or in part “. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan downplayed the significance of the genocide “label” in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” “In my opinion, the label is less important than the fact that these acts are cruel and criminal, wrong and bad, and must be answered decisively, and that is what we do,” Sullivan said when Tapper pressured him to kill Russian civilians. in Ukraine. In a separate interview with ABC “This Week”, Sullivan said that the administration considers performance as a legal distinction. “This is a determination we are working on systematically,” he said. “There is a unit in the State Department that collects data and then does a legal analysis, because genocide is actually a legal designation.” Appearing on the State of the Union, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trindade told CNN that “it is clear that Putin is systematically targeting civilians,” saying that was why Canada had backed an International Criminal Court investigation into the war crimes. Asked by Tapper if Russia’s actions in Ukraine constitute genocide, Trinto said: “These are the things that will be determined.” “Obviously, the messages we see are the stories of what Russian soldiers are doing, not just the killing of civilians, but the systematic use of sexual violence and rape to destabilize and have as much of a negative impact on the Ukrainian people as possible. “absolutely unforgivable and unacceptable,” he added.
