Alwaght- US President Joe Biden accused Russia of committing “barbarism” in Ukraine, in a further escalation of tensions between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine war.
“It’s more of their barbarism,” Biden said at the official welcome of the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Germany on Sunday after the US media claimed a Russian missile attack damaged a kindergarten in Kiev on Sunday morning.
According to The Associated Press, Russia fired long-range missiles toward Kiev early Sunday, as Biden and his European allies meet in Europe to increase their military and economic aid to Ukraine.
Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the missiles targeted two residential buildings, and Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said a 37-year-old man was killed and his 7-year-old daughter and wife injured. The strikes also allegedly damaged a nearby kindergarten.
The AP said its journalists saw emergency workers battling flames and rescuing civilians from the buildings.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in an interview on CNN that a Russian victory would be “absolutely catastrophic” for the world.
Meanwhile, at a bilateral meeting between Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Sholz on Sunday, Biden urged NATO allies and the world's wealthiest nations to "stay together" against Russia.
“Putin has been counting on, from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G7 would splinter,” Biden said. “But we haven’t, and we’re not going to.”
“The good message is that we all made it to stay united, which obviously Putin never expected,” he said.
The Biden administration has previously accused Putin of committing war crimes in Ukraine but has stopped short of accusing him of “genocide.”
On Friday, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced a resolution, which accuses Russia of committing “genocide” in Ukraine.
The draft resolution reportedly accuses Moscow of crimes that it asserts were actually committed by Ukrainian forces.
The resolution, entitled ‘Recognizing Russian actions in Ukraine as a genocide,’ was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen on Friday.
According to Foreign Policy, the resolution “argues that atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine, including indiscriminate attacks on civilians, the direct targeting of maternity hospitals and medical facilities” constitute genocide.
The resolution also argues that “the forcible transfer of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia and Russian-held territory” meets the criteria laid out by the United Nations in its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Ukraine has been at war with Russia since President Vladimir Putin declared a military operation in the neighboring country in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
At the beginning of Russia’s military operation, Putin declared that his forces were entering the country to stop the ongoing “humiliation and genocide” of the people of Donetsk and Lugansk.
