US President Joe Biden has accused Russia of carrying out genocide in Ukraine, saying that Vladimir Putin is “trying to wipe out the idea of even being Ukrainian”.
The White House has sent out a transcript of Biden's follow-up remarks about his earlier comments on genocide.
At an event in Menlo, Iowa, the US president suggested Putin was carrying out genocide against Ukraine.
Biden was asked about this comment shortly afterwards as he boarded Air Force One for take off from Des Moines International Airport.
“Yes, I called it genocide,” he told reporters in Iowa shortly before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington. “It’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being a Ukrainian.”
"And the amount - the evidence is mounting. It’s different than it was last week.
"The - more evidence is coming out of the - literally, the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine. And we're going to only learn more and more about the devastation.
"And we'll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me."
At an earlier event in Menlo, Iowa, addressing spiking energy prices resulting from the war, Biden had implied that he thought Putin was carrying out genocide against Ukraine, but offered no details. Neither he nor his administration announced new consequences for Russia or assistance to Ukraine following Biden’s public assessment.
Biden’s comments drew praise from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had encouraged Western leaders to use the term to describe Russia’s invasion of his country.
Biden has been consistently outspoken in denouncing Russian wholesale killing of Ukrainian civilians, labelling Putin as a “war criminal” in mid-March. Multiple investigations are under way into Russian atrocities in Ukraine, which include the razing of Mariupol and the executions of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
The prosecutor at the international criminal court in the Hague opened a case in February saying there was “a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine”.
Just last week Biden had he did not believe Russia’s actions amounted to genocide, just that they constituted “war crimes.”
During a trip to Europe last month, Biden faced controversy for a nine-word statement seemingly supporting regime change in Moscow, which would have represented a dramatic shift toward direct confrontation with another nuclear-armed country. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.
He clarified the comments days later, saying: “I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man. I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
