Biden calls atrocities in Ukraine a “genocide”

US President Joe Biden said Tuesday for the first time that the atrocities being uncovered in Ukraine qualify as genocide, a term he had previously avoided. 

 

“I called it genocide because it’s become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out even the idea of being Ukrainian. The evidence is mounting,” Biden told reporters in Iowa.

 

“It’s different than it was last week, the more evidence that’s coming out,” he continued. “Literally, the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine — and we’re going to only learn more and more about the devastation.”

 

“We’ll let the lawyers decide, internationally, whether or not it qualifies,” he concluded, “but it sure seems that way to me.”

 

CNN says that It was a dramatic rhetorical escalation in the US view of what is happening on the ground in Ukraine, which Biden has previously deemed war crimes.