Washington and London see the Russian aggression against Ukraine as a "global war"

The United States firmly believes that Russia has committed “crimes against humanity” during the invasion of Ukraine that Vladimir Putin launched almost a year ago, after a factual and legal examination sponsored by the State Department, the vice president said yesterday. American, Kamala Harris, during the Munich Security Conference (MSC), which started on Friday and ends today.

The conflict unleashed on Ukrainian soil by the Russian aggression, which will be one year old on February 24, is also a “global war, both because of its impact on food and energy security and because of its implications for internationally accepted norms such as the sovereignty”, agreed Harris and the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, in a bilateral meeting during this informal forum on defense and security that is held every year in the Bavarian capital.

“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards and there is no doubt: these are crimes against humanity,” said Harris, who was a prosecutor before entering federal politics in his country. , in his speech before the MSC. “And I say to all those who have perpetrated these crimes, and to their superiors who are complicit in these crimes, they will be held accountable,” said the vice president, arguing that justice will persecute them.

Kamala Harris listed as “barbaric and inhumane” acts against the Ukrainian civilian population: the dozens of victims in Bucha shortly after the invasion began on February 24, 2022; the March 9 bomb attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol; or the rape of a four-year-old girl by a Russian soldier, documented in a UN report.

Organizations funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have documented more than 30,000 war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine, according to the Biden Administration. Kyiv aspires to establish a special international court to try Russia’s top officials, but its legal format involves complex legal issues.

Strategically, Kamala Harris congratulated herself because “Russia is getting weaker, and the Atlantic Alliance is getting stronger,” although she lamented that Iran provides drones to Russia and that China is compromising with Putin, something the United States “see with concern.” Harris warned that “any move by China to provide lethal support to Russia would amount to rewarding aggression, allowing it to continue killing, and further undermining a rules-based order.”

This 59th edition of the Munich Security Conference brings together more than 40 heads of state and government and numerous defense or foreign ministers, as well as experts and academics in the field. The meeting has always been an occasion to listen to less usual voices in Western or Atlanticist debate forums, and yesterday the surprise came when the head of Chinese diplomacy, Wang Yi, described the United States’ reaction to “absurd and hysterical” the Chinese balloons that, according to him, “diverted from their route” and were shot down, “a one hundred percent abuse of the use of force” in the American sky. “We urge the United States not to do such absurd things just to divert attention from its internal problems,” Yi said.

The British Rishi Sunak had his own speech at the Munich conference, and argued that NATO should design some kind of security guarantee for Ukraine against Russia, pending its eventual entry into the Atlantic Alliance. “From human rights to reckless nuclear threats, from Georgia to Moldova, Russia has committed violation after violation against countries outside of NATO’s collective security; and the response from the international community has not been strong enough,” Sunak argued.

In the meeting between Harris and Sunak – a new visibility of the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, increased since Brexit – both “condemned those countries that have supported Putin’s efforts politically and militarily,” according to the same statement. from the British office that included the vision of both about the war in Ukraine as a “global war”.